GIFT  or 

EDWARD  G.  FARHSWORT 


THREE  GREAT  EPOCH-MAKERS 
IN  MUSIC 


TO    THE    MEMORY    OF 
MY    TEACHER    AND    FRIEND 

HERMANN   KOTZSCHMAR 

THAT    RIPE    MUSICIAN 

WHOSE    MATURE   JUDGMENT    HAS    MUCH 

STRENGTHENED    MY    OWN 

CONVICTIONS 

THESE    PAGES    ARE    DEDICATED 


Three  Great  Epoch-Makers 
in  Music 


BY 

EDWARD  CLARENCE  FARNSWORTH 


PORTLAND 

SMITH  &  SALE,  PRINTERS 

MDCCCCXII 


v^ 


COPYRIGHT    iqi2 

BY 

EDWARD    CLARENCE    FARNSWORTH 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 
PREFACE       ........  Vii 

JOHANN    SEBASTIAN    BACH     .....  3 

FREDERIC    CHOPIN  ......         ^7, 

RICHARD    STRAUSS    AND    THE    ART    OF    SOUND  .  8 1 


282332 


PREFACE 

BEARING  in  mind  Emerson's  saying  that  every 
action  admits  of  being  outdone,  and  around 
every  circle  another  may  be  drawn,  we  none  the  less 
believe  that  a  comparison  of  Sebastian  Bach,  Frederic 
Chopin  and  Richard  Strauss,  will  show  that,  because 
of  excellences  peculiar  to  his  day,  and  also  individual 
excellences,  no  one  of  these  three  epoch-makers  wholly 
outdoes,  wholly  encircles  either  of  the  others.  Rather 
is  he  a  link  of  a  chain  in  which  Beethoven,  Wagner, 
and  certain  others  are  indispensable. 

That  chain  had  beginning  in  the  remote  past,  but, 
because  inadequate,  many  early  links  are  now  broken. 
Of  musicians  prior  to  Bach,  Gregory  and  Palestrina 
alone  have  endured  the  strain  of  time.  The  inade- 
quacy of  the  old,  true  of  not  another  art,  proves  music 
to  be  virtually  an  achievement  of  the  last  two  and  one- 
half  centuries.  This  brief  term,  a  mere  fraction  of  that 
which  must  be  allowed  to  certain  of  the  sister  arts, 
argues  for  music  a  very  considerable  period  of  future 
development. 

vii 


PREFACE 

Comparison  of  the  Gregorian  Chants  with  the  Wag- 
nerian scores  may  bring  doubt  upon  this  statement, 
but,  since  the  advent  of  Richard  Strauss,  it  seems 
probable  that  the  musician  of  the  future  will  smile  at 
the  ideals  of  our  contemporary  composers.  What  were 
the  tendencies  whose  centering  in  one  master  mind 
produced  the  great  classical  beginnings  of  modern 
music,  we  would  show  in  our  estimate  of  Bach.  The 
tendencies  eventuating  in  the  free  style  of  the  roman- 
ticist, and  the  abandon  of  the  ultra  school,  we  would 
indicate  in  our  estimate  of  Chopin.  And,  because  of 
present  tendencies,  what  direction  tonal  development 
will  yet  take,  we  shall  endeavor  to  ascertain  in  our 
estimate  of  Richard  Strauss. 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 


FAR  down  the  vista  of  history  stands  the  Grecian 
Homer,  unique,  and,  save  for  Hesiod,  alone 
amidst  the  memorable  years.  Alone  we  say,  but  from 
the  view-point  of  his  contemporaries  was  visible  in  the 
background  —  even  to  the  dim  horizon  of  civilization 
—  many  an  eminence  inferior  only  when  compared 
with  that  colossal  peak  of  Ionic  song.  To  every 
philologist,  to  every  classical  scholar,  the  development 
and  finish  of  the  Homeric  hexameter  argues  convinc- 
ingly a  poetical  ancestry  of  which  the  Iliad  and  the 
Odyssey  are  culmination. 

The  chiselled  achievements  of  Phidias,  and  whatso- 
ever else  extant  of  Attic  sculpture,  attest  the  attained 
perfection  of  an  art  in  whose  day  of  puerility  the 
primitive  cave-dweller,  with  a  bit  of  broken  flint,  idly 
scratched  upon  the  bones  of  his  prey,  crude  semblance 
of  man,  animal,  fish,  reptile  and  bird.  The  worthiest 
triumphs  of  Renaissance  painting  are  traceable  to  the 
cruel,  warlike  impulse  of  the  savage  daubing  himself 
to  hideousness  with  earthy  pigments  and  the  red  juice 
of  ripened  berries.  The  grand  creations  of  the  Ger- 
man tone-builders  were  evolved  from  the  battle-yells 
of  aboriginal  tribes. 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

Thus  in  Earth's  purest,  highest  things  is  exemplified 
the  law  whereby  the  noble  somehow  emerged  from  the 
ignoble  like  the  sweet  and  tinted  flower  rooted  in 
the  unsavory  compost :  whereby  also  the  formative 
mind  of  man  itself  gained  scope  and  symmetry,  not 
through  sudden  and  strenuous  exercise,  but  in  a  way 
comparable  to  the  sphering  and  solidifying  and  upbuild- 
ing of  a  planet,  in  fact,  that  infinitely  gradual  and 
orderly  process  which  Nature  in  her  wisdom  has  every- 
where counterparted,  as  when  she  evolved  these 
modern  years  from  the  countless,  non-achieving  ages 
of  unrecorded  savagery;  ages  repulsive  with  the 
dominant,  brute  passions  of  men. 

Thus,  in  view  of  the  foregoing,  it  may  with  assurance 
be  admitted  that  every  genius  is  endowed  not  only  by 
the  immediate,  gracious  gift  of  God,  but  also  by  the 
accumulated  bequeathings  of  every  predecessor  in  the 
same  domain  of  usefulness. 

Well  we  know  that  while  the  puny  efforts  of  the 
ordinary  individual  ripple  but  for  an  instant  some  little 
surface  of  the  vast  ocean  of  mortal  life,  others  there 
be,  centers  of  mental  and  spiritual  power  at  once  wide- 
reaching,  deep-sounding,  and  long-enduring.  Always 
in  touch  with  unseen  angel  hands,  these  are  verily  the 
world's  immortals  co-working  with  the  Divine  Law  of 
human  progress.  Deathless  are  they  in  deed  and 
name;  the  prophet  of  Truth,  the  priest  of  God,  the 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

patriot  Warrior,  the  incorruptible  Statesman,  the  wise 
Ruler,  the  inspired  Artist  and  the  uplifted  Singer. 

Our  immediate  purpose  bids  us  choose  from  this 
noble  company ;  let  us  look  somewhat  into  the  dedi- 
cated life  of  Johann  Sebastian  Bach ;  let  us  inquire 
briefly  into  the  musical  mission  of  one  of  the  chief 
promoters  of  human  enlightenment. 

At  cursory  glance,  the  solid  and  abiding  work  of 
Bach  may  be  called  the  bed-rock,  the  basic  strata, 
whereon  rests  our  musical  world  of  this  present.  But, 
remembering  the  Flemish  Fuguists  and  their  prede- 
cessors, the  Canon  writers  of  the  Gotho-Belgic  school, 
and,  earlier,  the  Parisian  developers  of  the  primitive 
counterpoint  originating  in  French  Flanders  during  the 
tenth  century,  we  discover  other  strata  underl3dng 
and  upholding  the  Passion  Music,  the  Sacred  Cantatas, 
and  the  instrumental  Preludes  and  Fugues.  Nor  need 
this  discovery  belittle  our  estimate  of  Bach;  it  but 
illustrates  the  dependence  of  the  human  mind,  unstable 
without  the  foundation  and  buttress  of  other  minds. 
Shakespeare  himself  was  largely  the  product  of  excep- 
tional conditions,  the  rich  flower  of  the  Elizabethan 
environment,  the  chief  dramatic  poet,  the  genius  most 
gifted,  among  an  unusually  gifted  group  of  notables. 

The  Flemish  school  of  composition,  which,  at  the 
advent  of  Bach,  had  now  flourished  for  at  least  a 
century  and  a  half,  was  most  fortunate  in  one  of  its 


JOHAN^  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

earliest  pupils,  Palestrkia,  who,  infusing  into  its  abun- 
dant learning  the  spirit  of  Genius,  forthwith  evolved 
for  his  Italy  a  noble  and  devout  school  of  sacred 
music.  But,  despite  the  unhampered  labors  of  the 
Flemings,  no  native  individualizer  and  summarizer  of 
their  efforts  appeared  during  the  one  hundred  and 
fifty  years  prior  to  the  birth  of  Bach.  No  northern 
Palestrina  yet  fathered  a  national  sacred  music  suited 
to  the  needs  of  Protestant  Germany. 

Let  none  accuse  Nature  of  niggardness  because 
neither  seed  time  nor  summer  bends  with  the  ripened 
corn  and  wheat.  Let  him  await  her  seasonable  yield, 
unfailing  while  the  sun  shines  and  the  earth  revolves.. 
But  Nature  has  sowing  and  springing  and  ripening  in 
other  and  far  distant  fields ;  and  if  we,  unseeing,  com- 
prehend not,  let  it  suffice  that  she,  the  wise  and 
provident,  wholly  knows  what  sun  is  shining  on  those 
fields,  and  the  diameter  of  the  orbital  turning  of  their 
world  she  knows,  and  the  orderly  come  and  go  of 
their  unfailing  seasons.  And  so  it  befell  that  in  fitly 
appointed  time,  and  not  in  capricious  moment,  she 
gave  to  the  world  Sebastian  Bach  to  be  the  great 
individualizer  and  father  of  German  music. 

Of  Bach's  contemporaries  and  forerunners  of  the 
Flemish  school,  the  most  worthy  were  undoubtedly 
those  whom  he  revered;  those  who,  either  by  creation 
or  interpretation,  incited  him  to  early  effort,  and  easily 


/ 
JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

moulded  his  plastic  youth  into  semblance  of  the  unsur- 
passed composer  and  performer  which,  because  of 
mature  and  independent  after-labor,  he  wholly  became. 
And  yet,  as  compared  with  him,  of  what  largeness  are 
his  outgrown  models?  Of  what  enduring  substance, 
of  what  undimmable  fame,  such  musicians  as  Swee- 
linck,  Scheidemann,  Schuitz,  and  even  Reinken  and 
Buxtchude  ? 

Many  a  genius  has  towered  the  one  exception  in  a 
family  not  intellectually  prominent.  Unlike  the  major- 
ity of  his  class,  Bach  owed  much  to  heredity.  Others 
of  his  blood,  immediate  ancestors  and  numerous  living 
relatives,  all  had  accomplished  something  worthy  of 
mention  in  music.  Nor  did  Nature  expend  her  ener- 
gies in  producing  him  the  greatest  of  the  Bachs.  That 
of  which  his  genius  was  the  culmination,  ceasing  not 
with  himself,  experienced  a  gradual  decline  through 
his  numerous  descendants. 

Never  was  a  genius  more  thoroughly  equipped  for  his 
life  work  than  was  Sebastian  Bach.  Musical  learning 
in  him  first  reached  its  fullness.  In  his  larger  composi- 
tions, as  in  the  epics  of  Milton,  every  page  reveals  the 
student  of  the  ages  ;  but  what  in  lesser  men  sinks  to 
dry  scholarship,  in  Bach,  as  in  Milton,  becomes  a 
glorious  compendium  of  classical  erudition,  and  this 
because  of  the  abundant  presence  of  that  transforming 
quality  denied  to  mediocrity,  to  wit,  Imagination. 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

Many  a  great  page  of  Milton,  and,  for  that  matter, 
of  Dante  also,  proves  but  hard  reading  to  the  unlettered 
who  oftentimes  would  conceal  their  ignorance  under 
the  guise  of  fulsome  praise.  So  with  Bach.  While 
granting  his  obvious  learning,  many  amateurs,  fairly 
musical,  and  not  a  few  professional  musicians,  but 
little  estimate  his  noble  quality  of  imagination^ 

Bach  is  in  very  truth  the  Musician's  musician,  the 
touchstone  of  his  training.  When  for  himself  one  has 
conquered  the  technicalities  of  fugal  composition,  he 
is  in  fair  way  to  estimate  Bach  at  par  value,  for,  to  his 
own  discomfiture,  he  has  discovered  that  the  con- 
struction of  a  fugal  theme,  pronounced  and  pliant  as 
even  the  briefest  bearing  the  impress  of  Bach,  is  one 
of  the  great  doings  of  musical  skill  and  imagination. 
These  qualities  Bach  further  shows  in  the  treatment  of 
subject  and  counter-subject  by  means  of  the  stretto, 
and  all  devices  of  Canon  and  polyphonic  counter- 
point, moving  in  broad  and  stately  volume  to  the  final 
cadence  and  the  organ  point. 

In  their  highest  and  most  eloquent  efforts,  vocal  or 
instrumental,  the  composers  of  the  Contrapuntal 
School  had  recourse  always  to  the  fugue  whose  every 
voice  part  is  rendered  individually  prominent  as  in 
no  other  form  of  musical  expression,  ancient  or  mod- 
ern ;  nor  can  anything  more  adequate  in  this  respect 
be  constructed  or  conceived  of.     But  the  attainment  of 

8 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

a  perfect,  fugal  style  is  fraught  with  difficulties  insur- 
mountable to  many  composers,  and  almost  so  to  some 
whom  we  rightly  deem  among  the  greatest. 

Beethoven  himself  was  not  by  natural  bent  a  fuguist; 
his  genius  led  him  far  afield.  Notwithstanding  the 
strength  and  boldness  of  his  figures,  the  distinc- 
tiveness of  his  basses,  and  the  melodic  flow  of  the 
intermediate  parts  of  his  harmony,  the  not  many  ex- 
amples of  fugue,  found  in  the  bulk  of  his  collected 
works,  show  chiefly  the  ambition  of  the  explorer ;  and 
this  in  one  the  monarch  of  many  another  domain  of 
music. 

As  constructor  of  vocal  fugues,  Mendelssohn  was 
all  that  scholarship  could  make  him,  but  his  themes, 
when  compared  with  those  of  Bach  and  Handel,  are 
deficient  in  the  quality  of  boldness.  The  theme  is  the 
soul  of  the  fugue,  its  center  and  source  of  life,  and  bold 
ness  is  one  of  the  chief  requirements  of  the  theme. 
Individualized,  it  attracts  instant  attention  and  is 
easily  recognized  throughout  its  augmentations,  dim- 
inutions, and  inversions.  Among  the  leading  compos- 
ers of  every  land,  from  Italy  to  Poland  and  from 
France  to  Scandinavia,  may  be  named  many  divinely 
inspired  melodists,  and  also  many  noble  harmonists, 
whose  classic  or  romantic  measures  abound  in  felici- 
tous modulations  and  every  beauty  of  the  free  style ; 
but  how  the  great  masters  of  Fugue  narrow  one  by  one 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

as  we  eliminate  those  fallen  short  of  its  chiefest  re- 
quirements !  Finally  there  remain  but  two.  Kings 
are  they.  Sovereigns  indeed.  Contemporary  rulers 
born  in  the  selfsame  years.  George  Frederic  Handel 
is  one,  and  Johann  Sebastian  Bach  is  the  other. 

In  the  "Well-tempered  Clavichord,"  a  work  which 
the  celebrated  theorist  Richter  has  well  said  "should 
be  in  the  hands  of  all  who  devote  themselves  to  the 
higher  branches  of  musical  study,"  we  have,  by  the 
universal  acknowledgment  of  authorities,  the  culmin- 
ating perfection  of  the  Contrapuntal  School,  that  ample 
heritage  from  an  era  more  and  more  behind  the  Class- 
icism of  Haydn,  Mozart  and  Beethoven,  and  the  Roman- 
ticism of  Schumann,  Chopin  and  Wagner.  Severe  with 
the  legacies  of  the  mediaeval  spirit,  this  comprehensive 
work  of  Bach,  embracing  the  totality  of  the  major  and 
the  minor  keys,  is,  for  breadth  and  strength,  compara- 
ble with  the  chief  religious  frescoes  of  Michel  Angelo. 

With  reverence,  and  a  sense  of  deep  obligation, 
every  sterling  musician  looks  back  to  Johann  Sebastian 
Bach,  seeing  in  him  the  virile  forebear  of  whatsoever 
is  rich  and  euphonious  and  learned  in  modern  instru- 
mental music.  Composers  like  Felix  Mendelssohn 
and  Robert  Franz,  have  sat  at  the  feet  of  Bach  and 
hailed  him  their  musical  Messiah,  and  many,  numbered 
not  in  the  circle  of  such  discipleship,  have  barkened 
to  the  voice  of  his  teaching ;  and  some  there  be,  who, 

10 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

touching  but  the  hem  of  his  garments,  were  cured  of 
weakness  and  infirmity. 

The  grand,  old  German  Chorals,  those  voicings  of 
religious  fervor  steadfast  and  heart-deep,  wherefrom 
every  frivolity  of  the  world  was  banished ;  those  mas- 
sive, stately  hymns  of  a  communion  whose  worshippers 
each  mingled  his  individual  offering  with  the  outpour 
of  congregational  praise,  are  forever  associated  with 
the  name  of  Bach,  their  amplifier  and  enricher,  as  with 
the  name  of  him  who  introduced  them  into  the  service 
of  the  Lutheran  Church.  Bold  and  enduring,  like 
monolithic  hills,  those  rugged  Chorals  long  had  stood 
untouched  by  the  meddlesome  hand  of  Mediocrity. 
Surely  their  incorporation  by  Bach  into  his  greatest 
works  demanded  a  genius  equal  to  that  of  their  orig- 
inators, and,  in  addition,  the  total  of  judgment  and 
learning  which  our  master  summoned  to  his  well- 
accomplished  task. 
"jC  At  the  very  outset  of  his  career,  Bach  was  drawn  to 
'  the  style  of  composition  which  thereafter  characterized 
his  efforts.  The  Italian  Opera,  that  belonging  of 
quite  another  people,  that  importation  which  was  to 
absorb,  until  past  middle  life,  the  energies  of  his  great 
contemporary  Handel,  held  for  Bach  no  allurements. 
He  had  in  supreme  degree  the  instinct  of  the  born 
specialist ;  he  desired  and  aimed  to  do  a  supreme  thing 
supremely.     His  was  that  native  wisdom  which  con- 

II 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

fined  his  energies  within  their  wide  and  deep  channel, 
the  course  of  non-resistance  indicated  by  the  cleavage 
of  the  hills  and  the  lay  of  the  valleys  of  the  rugged, 
musical  landscape  which  had  environed  his  predeces- 
sors, and  amidst  which  he  himself  matured  to  self- 
conscious,  artistic  being.  But,  though  a  specialist. 
Bach  was  so  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word.  His  com- 
prehensive interest  could  not  be  circumscribed  and 
iron-bound  by  his  specialty.  Well  he  knew  the  anat- 
omy of  the  whole  body  of  music,  and  well  he  realized  the 
interdependence  of  its  various  members ;  and  so  with 
keen  interest  he  noted  every  happening  in  parts  most 
removed  from  the  center  of  its  life. 

Naturally,  we  find  him  seeking  acquaintance  with 
Handel  far  off  in  the  English  home  of  his  adoption. 
But  the  opportunity  for  a  friendship  no  doubt  of  vast, 
mutual  advantage,  Handel  seems  to  have  ignored. 
Perhaps  he  preferred  the  lone  sufficiency  of  his  gigan- 
tic selfhood.  Other  reasons  might  be  conjectured,  but, 
in  truth,  Handel  had  grown  somewhat  out  of  touch 
with  Bach.  Aside  from  the  matter  of  the  Italian 
Opera,  the  environments  of  London  metropolitan  life, 
and  also  the  art  life  of  England  —  largely  moulded  by 
her  great  masters  of  English  verse  —  had  reacted  upon 
the  genius  of  Handel  making  him  in  some  degree  non- 
German,  and  yet,  by  way  of  compensation,  making  him 
the   chief  glory  of  English   music,  and  the  model  of 

12 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

native  composers  who  but  for  him  might  have  harked 
back  to  Purcell  and  Orlando  Gibbons.  Different 
indeed  was  the  life  of  Bach,  a  life  remote  from  the 
great  centers  of  worldly  activity.  In  that  life  is  seen 
no  arenal  contests  like  those  which,  fast  and  furious 
with  thrust  and  counter  thrust,  too  much  filled  the 
rival  days  of  Handel  and  Bononcini. 

The  compositions  of  Bach  provoked  no  partisan 
spirit,  nor  cared  he  for  that  mere  notoriety  which 
benefits  the  well-damned  equally  with  the  well-praised. 
In  the  lives  of  men  like  Bach  and  Handel,  every 
moment  of  well-ordered  activity  is  a  boon  to  their  pub- 
lic, every  moment  of  misdirected  effort  is  an  unmitigated 
loss.  However,  in  the  life  of  Bach  we  lack  cause  to 
regret  an  abortiveness  of  result  lamentable  in  the  life 
of  Handel  of  whom  it  might  be  asked,  Of  what  musical 
enrichment  to  the  present  are  those  many  operatic 
effusions  of  his  busy,  young  manhood,  and  his  industri- 
ous middle-prime  ?  For  the  most  part  they  are  dead  and 
coffined  in  the  dark  of  oblivion.  Whatsoever  escapes 
forgetfulness  has,  with  rare  exceptions,  experienced  a 
veritable  reincarnation  among  the  florid  beauties  of  his 
Oratorios,  the  crown  and  glory  of  his  last  and  greatest 

years. 

II 

By  virtue  of  his  high  endowment,  Bach  possessed  that 
wisdom  of  genius  which,  to  the  thrifty  and  so-called 

13 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

practical,  is  but  the  foolishness  of  the  visionary. 
Except  in  the  case  of  a  few  works  engraved  by  his 
own  hands,  he  gave  no  thought  to  the  immediate  out- 
come of  his  labors;  and  yet,  amidst  the  accumulation 
of  his  great,  unpublished  compositions,  he  wrote  on  as 
if  all  the  engravers  and  compositors  of  Saxony  were 
crying  for  copy.  A  lesser  man,  a  man  of  talent,  would 
have  seen  to  it  that  his  masterpieces  for  voice  and 
clavichord  and  organ  were  first  in  the  shop  and  then 
in  the  home,  the  church  and  the  concert  hall.  That  he 
felt  concern  for  these,  his  mentally-begotten,  is  certain  ; 
else  he  had  spared  himself  that  prodigious  concentration 
of  thought  the  result  of  which  each  preserves  in  a 
body  vitalized  to  endure  throughout  the  centuries. 
No  time  had  he  for  obtuse  and  over-cautious  publish- 
ers, nor  would  he  debase  his  ideals  to  popularize  and 
make  saleable  his  inspirations.  His  was  an  artistic 
conscience  analogous  to  that  of  the  saint  and  the 
martyr ;  his  their  self-sacrifice  to  principle ;  his  that 
undebasable  virtue,  that  adherence  to  conviction, 
which  is  its  own  sweet  reward  in  whatever  of  high  or 
humble  man's  lot  is  fixed.  His  every  creative  act 
spake  something  like  this :  "  Brief  indeed  is  the  most 
lengthened  life  of  man,  and  long  must  the  world  await 
another  Sebastian  Bach.  Let  me  use  my  permitted 
day  of  sunshine  ere  the  hastening  gloom  enshroud  and 
silence  it  forever  !  "     So  he  filled  to  fullness  the  incom- 

14 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

parable  hours.  Trusting  in  God  and  the  Time  Spirit, 
he  left  to  an  unknown  future  the  propaganda  of  his 
deeds. 

Ah,  when  the  ravisher  of  Peace,  and  the  subjugator 
of  his  kind,  has  fulfilled  his  fierce  ambition,  and  the 
rent  land  is  desolate  and  a  nation  enslaved  in  tyrant- 
welded  bonds,  how  fares  his  name  within  the  hearts 
and  on  the  lips  of  men  ?  Does  not  its  lettering  pollute 
with  blood  the  annals  of  his  time  .''  Not  with  the  harsh 
rattle,  not  with  the  red  horror  of  war,  but  rather  with 
a  sound  of  sweetest  harmony  comes  the  conquering 
musician,  and  the  charmed  world,  his  debtor,  proclaims 
him  lord  of  a  realm  more  peaceful  than  once  the  great 
Augustus  mildly  ruled. 

Longfellow's  often-quoted  lines : 

Lives  of  great  men  all  remind  us 
We  can  make  our  lives  sublime, 

are  not  wholly  in  accord  with  truth,  for  the  domestic  life 
of  many  a  great  man  lends  warrant  to  Mrs.  Carlyle's 
warning  against  marrying  a  genius.  And,  surely,  what 
is  the  brief  domestic  life  of  Byron  if  not  a  mystery  of 
unhappiness  ?  On  the  other  hand,  the  lives  of  some 
of  earth's  greatest  have  proved  sublime  even  in  such 
testing  ordeal.  No  "  sweet  bells  jangled  out  of  tune 
and  harsh "  drowned  their  connubial  harmony ;  no 
wranglings  of  the  ill-mated  made  the  house  rather  a 

15 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

hell  than  a  home  ;  no  Coleridge-like  shirking  of  family 
responsibilities  demeaned  them  in  the  eyes  of  men  ;  no 
divergence  of  aim  kept  husband  and  wife  always  at 
cross  purpose. 

The  home  of  Bach  was  the  modest  German  home 
whose  like,  throughout  the  Fatherland,  had  bred  the 
bone  and  sinew  and  brain  of  a  great  and  worthy 
nation.  It  was  the  shielding  home  into  whose  peaceful 
shelter  the  disquieting  v/orid  intruded  not;  the  home 
paternal,  maternal,  and  fraternal,  where  blossomed 
daily  those  sweet  domesticities  which  root  themselves 
in  mutual  love.  It  was  the  simple  home,  source  and 
conserver  of  the  simple  life ;  the  fruitful  home  free 
from  imputation  of  race  suicide ;  the  happy  home  for- 
ever young  with  voices  of  childhood  and  youth ;  the 
Christian  home  from  whence  ascended  in  prayer  and 
thanksgiving  the  homage  of  reverent  hearts !  It  was, 
in  short,  the  ideal  home  approved  by  earth,  by  Heaven 
ordained  and  blessed ;  and  he,  the  great  Bach,  was  its 
patriarchal  head. 

The  creative  artist  stands  at  noblest  remove  from 
that  brute  inheritance  of  ours,  the  desire  to  take  by 
violence.  In  him  is  manifest  the  God-like  character- 
istic of  the  highest  type  of  man,  namely,  desire  to  give 
for  the  pure  love  of  giving. 

Therefore,  on  such  lives  as  that  of  Bach,  the  welfare 
of  the   world  depends;  they  call  it   back   from    that 

i6 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

insanity  of  selfishness  toward  which  the  age  is  tending. 
Such  lives  attest  the  claims  of  the  ideal ;  they  prove 
them  to  be  of  practical  value.  Such  lives  are,  indeed, 
barriers  against  an  on-rushing  Materialism  which  other- 
wise might  engulf  us  all. 

Of  the  modern  composer  it  must  often  be  said  that 
the  world  is  too  much  with  him ;  and  to  this  misfortune 
are  largely  attributable  the  inequalities  abounding  in 
his  music.  Because  of  his  co-partnership  with  that 
which  tends  to  warp  and  deaden  his  artistic  sensibility, 
he  must  needs  force  his  inspiration  ;  the  result  proving 
that  the  serenity  of  the  high  vision  is  not  in  him,  but 
rather  the  delirium-nightmare  of  the  world-fever.  Nor 
can  it  be  otherwise  unless  he  benefit  by  the  example  of 
Bach  and  his  kind.  Like  him,  he  should  achieve  a  full 
and  final  consecration  necessary  as  that  of  the  priest 
and  the  prophet.  Apart  from  the  world  wherewith  he 
mingles ;  self-centered  amidst  the  babbling  multitude ; 
deaf  to  the  babel  of  their  tongues ;  he  should  listen  to 
the  great  song  of  life,  the  heavenly  melody  filling  the 
shut  sanctuary  of  his  soul  wherein  to  the  world  cannot 
enter.  If  he  so  do,  it  shall  not  be  said  of  him  that  he 
lived  in  vain,  or  that  his  works  but  swelled  the  rubbish 
heap  of  Time. 

The  staid,  methodical  life  of  Bach  the  man,  wherein 
nothing  erratic  is  discoverable,  was  counterparted  by 
the  life  of  Bach  the  creative  genius.     The  orderly  and 

17 

•7 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

exhaustive  development  of  a  characteristic  theme  was 
to  him  the  chief  artistic  end  obtainable.  In  the  school 
of  which  he  was  the  great  exponent,  the  imaginings  of 
the  composer  must  be  moulded  to  the  requirements  of 
an  exacting  and  time-approved  model ;  but,  despite 
the  severity  of  the  strict  polyphonic  style,  whose 
restrictions  led  to  its  modification  by  the  Classicists, 
and  its  final  abandonment  by  the  Romanticists,  Bach 
moving  in  this,  his  congenial  element,  was  no  more 
hampered  than  is  the  freest  illustrator  of  modern 
methods. 

Although  German  Protestantism  found  in  Bach  its 
musical  expression,  in  him  —  the  towering  genius  — 
was  inevitably  paramount  that  broad  and  lofty  religion 
of  pure  art  which,  above  credal  differences,  outpours  its 
prayer  and  thanksgiving  in  the  creation  of  the  beauti- 
ful, and  therefore  the  good  and  the  true.  Would  any- 
one suppose  the  author  of  the  Mass  in  B  miinor  to  be  a 
dissenter  from  the  Roman  Catholic  communion }  As 
a  noble  vehicle  of  religious  feeling,  the  Mass  inspired 
Bach  to  a  work  surpassing  all  similar  efforts  of  Roman 
Catholic  composers ;  a  work  which,  to  every  heart  in 
tune  with  the  sublime,  is  a  revelation  of  the  essence  of 
undogmatic  religion. 

Whilst  grave  dignity  well  becomes  a  king,  and  whilst 
the  voice  and  look  of  authority  are  rightfully  his,  we 
love  to  see  him  doff  at  times  the  insignia  of  his  station, 

i8 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

and  eschew  the  pomp  and  ceremony  of  royal  surround- 
ings to  enact  a  part  identifying  him  with  the  human 
in  the  great  common  life  of  the  world. 

Even  so  we  see  the  sovereign  of  the  Fugue,  the 
Mass,  the  Cantata  and  the  "  Passion,"  unbending 
affably  toward  such  lesser  things  as  the  Suite,  the 
Partita  and  the  a  capella  Motet.  But,  though  con- 
descending, Bach  is  nevertheless  the  king  ;  hence  these 
all  acquire  from  his  magnetic,  uplifting  presence,  a 
consequence  before  unknown  to  any  of  their  kind. 

Bearing  in  mind  the  lives  of  such  men  as  Sir  Henry 
Irving,  one  hardly  realizes  that  the  play-actor  of  the 
Elizabethan  Era  had  no  more  social  status  than  the 
veriest  mountebank.  The  German  musical  genius  of 
Bach's  day,  and  for  long  thereafter,  was  usually  a  mere 
retainer  to  some  consequential  petty  prince,  and,  socially, 
only  a  degree  higher  than  his  master's  lackey.  But 
habit,  sprung  from  a  "necessity  which  itself  may  have 
originated  in  a  refinement  and  delicacy  of  organization 
inclining  the  musician  rather  to  submit  than  to  com- 
bat the  coarse  and  selfish,  had  so  accustomed  the 
court  composer  to  the  role  of  servile  dependent  upon 
royal  patronage,-that  he  seldom  realized  to  what  degre- 
dation  his  anciently  esteemed  calling,  that  of  the  bard, 
had  fallen. 

But  as  for  the  masculinely  self-assertive  Bach,  for- 
tunately   or    unfortunately    not    often   in    touch    with 

19 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

princes,  he  assumed  no  attitude  of  flattery  toward  his 
employers,  the  penurious  and  unjustly-exacting  town 
authorities  of  Liepsic. 

Lamentable  indeed  is  the  fact  that  Bach  was  forced 
by  circumstances  into  what,  to  one  of  his  capabilities, 
must  have  been  the  most  dreary,  routine  drudgery. 
Imagine  Handel  leaving  half-penned  some  sublime 
Chorus,  to  toil  with  a  dull  and  refractory  pupil  who 
never  by  any  means  would  attain  to  average  musician- 
ship. 

To  sensitive  nerves,  over-tensioned  through  sym- 
pathy with  a  high-wrought  emotional  nature  which 
aspires  and  soars  towards  some  beauty  native  to 
another  sphere,  such  instant  drop  is  comparable  to 
that  of  the  wounded  bird  checked  in  the  moment  of 
most  buoyant  flight.  Beethoven  would  none  of  it  for, 
because  of  his  bachelorhood,  he  was  independent;  but 
with  Bach,  the  good  father  of  sons  and  daughters  to 
the  number  of  twenty,  it  was  far  otherwise.  Toil  he 
must  and  toil  he  did  as  cantor  in  the  school  and  choir- 
master in  the  church. 

To  certain  musicians  far  less  endowed  than  was 
Bach,  the  act  of  teaching  has  been  but  semblance  of 
labor,  and,  at  times,  the  merest  farce.  Behold  the 
modern,  world-flattered,  fashion-sought  Virtuoso  of  the 
Pianoforte,  accessible  only  to  the  highest  aspirant  to 
musical    renown !     Behold    that    awe-struck    aspirant 

20 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

ushered  into  the  presence  of  the  august  one !  He 
listens  to  the  embarrassed  player,  yes,  he  the  lofty 
deigns  to  listen !  Ah  !  but  will  he,  the  great  Jove  of 
modern  music,  look  down  in  kindness  from  his  Par- 
nassus, or  will  he  utterly  blast  with  the  lightning  of  his 
eyes,  and  dumfound  with  the  angry  thunders  of  his 
mouth  ?  Who  can  tell  ?  Surely  none  but  the  great 
Jove  himself,  for  his  pleasure  or  his  displeasure,  like 
that  of  the  ancient  deity,  is  but  matter  of  caprice 
dependent  wholly  upon  his  present  mood.  How  the 
conditions  which  hampered  the  life  of  Bach  contrast 
with  those  favoring  the  musical  celebrity  of  our  day ! 
But  then,  the  world  abounds  with  incongruities  even 
to  the  placing  of  the  beggar  on  the  throne  and  the 
king  on  the  dunghill. 

The  poet  bards  of  long  ago,  the  Ossians  of  the 
North  and  the  Homers  of  the  South,  declaimed  their 
epics  of  love  and  war  to  a  harp  accompaniment  which 
often  must  have  approached  free  improvisation.  The 
complex  recitative  of  Wagner,  for  example,  the  endless 
melody  of  his  "  Tristan  and  Isolde,"  purports  to  be  the 
attained  ideal  of  those  elder  singers ;  but,  between 
the  bald  freedom  of  the  old  and  the  luxuriant  freedom 
of  the  new,  have  obtained  what  Wagner  considered 
two  grave,  musical  mistakes :  first,  the  evolution  of 
fixed  form  originating  in  the  primitive  dance  tune  and 
eventuating  in  the  Bach  Fugue,  and,  second,  largely 

21 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

due  to  the  labors  of  Bach,  the  individualizing  of 
instrumental  music  apart  from  vocal  music  once 
deemed  its  indispensable  auxiliary. 

Speaking  without  bias,  it  should  be  said  that  although 
to  Bach  we  justly  render  every  encomium  due  unto 
one  of  the  most  gifted  masters  of  music,  we  give  with 
full  knowledge  that  his  art,  notwithstanding  its  beauty 
and  excellence,  is  but  a  facet  of  the  gem  whose  all  of 
resplendence  these  later  days  are  privileged  to  behold. 
Probably  the  perfection  of  contrapuntal  writing  was  to 
Bach  the  perfection,  the  entirety,  of  great  music.  He 
would  doubtless  have  condemned  as  vague  and  dis- 
cursive much  in  the  pianoforte  and  orchestral  works 
which  characterized  Beethoven's  middle  and  last  period. 

How  he  would  have  regarded  certain  liberties  in  the 
harmonic  progression  may  be  surmised.  Although 
Bach  himself  was  in  this  respect  something  of  an 
innovator,  he  must  have  deemed  such  divergence  the 
justifiable  limit  of  rule-breaking.  Could  he  have 
looked  forward  to  the  chief  exponent  of  the  Classical 
School,  he  might  have  said,  "  This  Beethoven  goes  too 
far,  even  to  the  deliberate  emplo3^ment  of  consecutive, 
perfect  fifths  in  rash  attempt  to  produce  dubious 
effects.  Besides,  he  abandons  the  native  German 
domain  of  the  Fugue  and  debouches  upon  a  land 
whereof  I  know  not,  a  strange  land  of  questionable 
manners  and  customs." 


22 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

III 

Monteverde  in  his  day  dared  to  introduce  the 
unprepared  seventh  of  the  dominant  triad;  but,  in 
boldness  he  was  not  alone.  In  fact,  the  development 
of  polyphony  from  the  wholly  unembellished  and 
quite  faulty  chord  progressions  of  early  mediaeval  music, 
has  been  but  a  series  of  innovations  at  first  condemned, 
then  suffered,  and  then  adopted.  The  earliest  poly- 
phonic writers  founded  their  music  wholly  on  the 
ecclesiastical  scales  derived  from  the  Greek  modes,  and 
approved  by  Ambrose  and  Gregory.  With  the  single 
exception  of  the  Ionic  scale,  identical  with  our  scale 
of  C  major,  these  scales  were  defective  chiefly  in  one 
essential,  to  wit :  in  place  of  the  modern  sharped 
seventh,  they  contained  the  flatted  seventh.  This 
error  precluded  the  possibility  of  the  characterizing 
major  third  of  the  dominant  chord  in  both  the  major 
and  the  minor.  Then  again,  the  sounding  of  the 
flatted  seventh,  which  in  modern  tonality  indicates 
modulation  to  the  subdominant  key,  suggested  to  the 
old  contrapuntists  a  triad  now  deemed  wholly  foreign 
to  the  tonic.  The  resulting  vagueness  found  remedy 
where  one  should  least  expect  it,  for,  in  their  melodies, 
the  popular  writers  of  both  song  and  dance  were  led 
instinctively  to  sharp  the  seventh,  and  otherwise  recon- 
struct the  six  defective  ecclesiastical  scales. 

23 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

The  increasing  use  of  accidentals  in  contrapuntal 
and  sacred  music,  gradually  evolved  the  chromatic 
scale,  and  led  to  the  founding  of  a  major  and  a  minor 
scale  on  each  of  its  twelve  semitones.  These  twenty- 
four  were  now  the  basis  of  that  grand  and  satisfying 
instrumental  polyphony  which  Bach  was  to  build  in 
his  "Well-tempered  Clavichord." 

As  late  as  the  time  of  Carissimi,  and  for  some  years 
thereafter,  polyphonic  writers  had  not  wholly  cast  off 
the  spell  of  Ambrose  and  Gregory,  for,  whilst  the 
seventh  was  now  by  universal  usage  sharped  in  the 
cadence,  otherwhere  still  lingered  a  tendency  to  revert 
to  the  flatted  seventh  of  the  ecclesiastical  scales. 

At  this  juncture,  the  further  development  of  polyph- 
ony, and,  in  fact,  the  further  development  of  all 
great  music,  found  in  Bach  that  peculiar  genius  which 
it  wholly  needed.  He  became  the  masterly  unifier  of 
the  harmonic  and  the  polyphonic  systems.  With  a 
correct  idea  of  key  relationship,  he  grouped  the  family 
of  chords  around  the  tonic  and  the  dominant  after  the 
manner  of  to-day.  At  the  same  time,  his  unparalleled 
use  of  anticipations,  suspensions  and  passing  notes, 
produced  an  effect  wonderfully  rich  in  the  stately 
sweep  of  his  measures.  Thus  he  prepared  the  way 
for  the  classical  music  of  Beethoven,  who,  turning 
from  strict  polyphony  to  a  style  wherein  his  endowed 
emotional  nature  found  wider  and  freer  scope,  became 

24 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

in  turn  an  innovator  in  that  he  gave  greater  variety  to 
the  harmonic  tissue  by  means  of  bold  and  before- 
unattempted  modulations.  Beethoven  in  turn  prepared 
the  way  for  Wagner  who  essayed  to  enlarge  the  number 
of  related  keys,  besides  carrying  the  art  of  modulation 
to  before-unknown  lengths,  even  to  the  limit  of  good 
taste :  also  by  an  exhaustive  use  of  anticipations,  sus- 
pensions, and  passing  notes,  this  latest  master  revealed 
the  fullest  development  of  the  Bachian  polyphony. 

How  little  of  true  foresight  comes  to  the  eyes  of  the 
sage  !  How  incommeasurable  that  foresight  with  his 
great  and  far  looking  back  1  How  much  of  riddle  his 
prophesying  touches  not  and  his  dying  leaves  un- 
solved !  Bach  knew  nothing  of  the  Classicism  of 
Beethoven,  who,  in  turn,  knew  nothing  of  the  Roman- 
ticism of  Schumann  and  Chopin  ;  and  what  knew  these 
of  the  latest  art-interblendings  of  Richard  Wagner 
and  Richard  Strauss  ?  Can  there  be  other  musical 
riddles  worth  the  solving?  If  so,  what  are  they;  and 
who  their  solver?  For  answer,  ask  the  average  musi- 
cian of  to-morrow ;  but  not  the  authorities  of  to-day. 

The  career  of  Bach,  the  composer,  covered  a  period 
of  about  forty-five  years,  in  fact,  a  period  longer  by 
thirteen  years  than  the  entire  life  of  Schubert ;  a 
period  longer  by  nine  years  than  the  life  of  Mozart ; 
longer  b}^  six  years  than  the  life  of  Mendelssohn  ;  and 
longer  by  five  years  than  the  lives  of  Chopin  and  Von 

25 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

Weber.  And  yet  Handel  and  Haydn  exceeded  by 
something  like  ten  years,  and  Verdi  by  nearly  twenty 
years,  the  extended  term  of  Bach's  productivity. 

Notwithstanding  the  fatal  catastrophe  which  ter- 
minated the  promise  of  the  poet  Shelley ;  notwithstand- 
ing the  hard  conditions  which  cramped  and  well-nigh 
thwarted  the  divinely-endowed  Mozart,  misplaced  as  a 
bird  of  Paradise  caged  in  an  Arctic  clime,  it  can  with 
truth  be  said  that  however  short  the  earthly  years 
allotted  to  men  of  genius,  they,  in  most  instances, 
have,  as  by  Divine  ordering,  given  to  the  world  their 
best. 

When  we  have  known  the  genius  through  his  v/orks, 
those  heart-resemblances,  those  mind-born  counter- 
paf ts  of  his  inner  self,  we  would  contact  the  outer  man, 
and  discover  in  facial  and  bodily  expression  some 
token  of  that  which  flesh  has  clothed.  Denied  this, 
we  turn  to  sculptured  or  painted  likeness  of  such  as 
Johann  Sebastian  Bach. 

In  vain  we  search  his  pictured  face  for  hint  of  the 
vacillating  or  the  superficial.  Every  feature  and  every 
lineament  is  indicative  of  massive,  self-centered  power 
dependent  only  as  man  is  dependent,  being  but  mortal. 
In  that  face  is  much  of  clinging  to  the  mind's  self- 
imposed  task ;  something  too  of  downright  obstinacy, 
as  also  in  the  sturdy  form  which,  like  post  or  pillar, 
would  say,  "I  stand  !   turn  and  resist  me  not !  " 

26 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

Behold  him  the  progenitor  of  many  children  after 
the  flesh,  and  many,  many  sprung  from  his  teeming 
and  tireless  brain  !  Behold  him,  the  musical  athlete, 
challenging  virtuosity  to  trial  of  skill  and  endurance, 
while  he  himself  rejoices  like  the  swift  and  strong  run- 
ner sure  of  his  lead  in  the  race ! 

Behold  him  deferential,  but  not  obsequious,  the 
admired  and  sought  of  a  monarch  and  the  chief  comer 
to  the  palace  of  Potsdam !  Behold  him,  unflattered 
by  the  attentions  of  royalty  and  court,  wending  back 
to  Liepsic,  and  his  humble  cantorship  with  its  meagre 
stipend  !  Behold  his  reverent  return  to  the  old  Luther- 
an Church  of  Saint  Thomas  and  the  well-remembered 
organ  where  with  praiseful  notes  he  often  had  sought 
and  found  a  greater  than  Frederic,  or  any  earthly 
potentate  ! 

Between  the  death  of  Bach  and  the  present  time, 
more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  have  inter- 
vened. Years  indeed  memorable ;  years  of  unpar- 
alleled activity  and  change  in  the  musical  world ;  years 
of  greater  enrichment  of  its  repertory  than  were  all 
preceding  them.  Those  one  hundred  and  fifty  years 
have  given  us  the  perfected  beauties  of  Italian,  French 
and  German  Opera.  They  have  produced  for  us 
Haydn  and  his  great  contemporaries  and  near  suc- 
cessors. From  them  is  that  priceless  heritage,  the 
Mendelssohn   Oratorios.     They  have  brought  to  our 

27 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

charmed  ears  the  lyric  songs  of  Schubert  and  Schu- 
mann, and  the  unique  and  wholly  adapted  tone-poetry 
of  Chopin,  composer  par  excellence  for  that  instru- 
ment of  which  the  clavichord  was  the  humble  precur- 
sor. Those  years  have  enlarged  the  orchestra  by 
introducing  many  new  and  telling  instruments,  also 
they  have  developed  its  technique  and  otherwise  ele- 
vated it  to  the  virtuoso  demands  of  our  most  modern 
composers.  Nevertheless,  the  music  of  Bach  is  nothing 
belittled  by  the  vast  sum  total  of  subsequent  achieve- 
ment, nor  grows  it  useless  like  a  garment  cast  aside 
because  no  longer  of  fashionable  cut  and  color.  And 
yet  that  music  was  underestimated  and  much  neglected 
in  Bach's  lifetime,  and,  afterwards  for  a  long  period, 
almost  forgotten,  until,  through  the  efforts  of  Mendels- 
sohn and  Franz  and  the  Bach  society,  it  was  rescued 
from  the  possibility  of  a  fate  like  that  of  many  an  ancient 
writing  for  which  the  regretful  world  has  vainly  sought. 
Bach  was  the  famed  virtuoso  of  an  era  when  far  less 
than  modern  skill  was  necessary  for  the  manipulation  of 
the  organ  and  the  clavichord,  and  yet  his  works  are 
to-day  surprisingly  well  adapted  to  the  technical  needs 
of  the  advanced  student.  Those  for  clavichord  are 
musically  adequate  in  the  programmes  of  the  modern 
concert  hall,  whilst  the  "Preludes  and  Fugues,"  and 
also  the  Toccatas,  are  the  delight  and  ambition  of 
good  organists  throughout  the  world. 

28 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

The  man  Johann  Sebastian  Bach  ;  how  much  might 
be  said  of  him,  the  kind  husband  and  father,  the 
good  and  respected  citizen,  the  devout  follower  of 
Luther,  the  foremost  among  contemporary  virtuosi, 
the  faithful  music-master  in  the  school,  the  conscien- 
tious precentor  in  the  church,  the  unobtrusive  genius 
touched  not  by  the  infirmities  of  noble  minds.  Surely 
much  more  might  be  said  in  way  of  encomium  than 
here  undertaken. 

The  composer,  Johann  Sebastian  Bach ;  how  much 
more  might  be  said  of  his  works  than  in  these  meagre 
pages ;  how  much  more  in  way  of  analysis  ;  but  such 
is  net  our  object. 

As  for  praise,  in  the  performance  of  those  works  we 
are  heart  to  heart  with  the  living  Bach,  the  immortal 
one,  the  deathless  part  of  whom  speaks  from  every  full 
and  satisfying  measure  their  meed  of  praise,  where- 
fore the  musical  world,  even  the  modern  musical 
world,  listens  and  approves. 

But  to  what  shall  we  liken  his  works  ?  With  what 
shall  they  be  compared  ?  Surely  with  the  mighty,  the 
steadfast,  the  undecaying !  They  are  comparable  with 
those  man-builded  mountains  of  stone  resting  forever 
upon  the  floor  of  the  Nile  Valley.  Yes,  they  are  in 
very  truth  the  Pyramids  of  Music,  and  Bach  with 
Cyclopean  hand  has  quarried  them,  block  by  block 
from  the  enduring  substance  of  the  cliffs,  and  he  has 

29 


JOHANN  SEBASTIAN  BACH 

fitted  each  to  other  with  that  accuracy  of  judgment, 
precision  of  workmanship,  and  grandeur  of  concep- 
tion, which  characterized  the  architect-builders  of  Old 
Egypt ;  those  whose  models  were  the  indestructible 
upbuildings  of  God,  even  the  ancient  and  everlasting 
hills. 


30 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 


THE  measure  of  a  man  is  the  measure  of  his  impress 
upon  the  world,  not  solely  and  of  necessity  the 
world  of  his  day,  but,  in  fact,  the  world  of  all  days 
henceforth  to  be.  Should  we  define  that  impress  as 
something  outwardly  apparent  like  his  doing  who  delves 
in  the  mine,  or  ploughs  in  the  field,  the  statement  is 
inadequate  and  even  false.  Our  world  is  a  manifold 
condition  wherein,  as  one  ascends,  things  material 
eventuate  in  things  mental  and  things  spiritual. 

This  globe,  vast  and  teeming  with  life ;  this  total  of 
mundane  consciousness,  is,  in  its  imponderable  aspect, 
subdivided  into  many  and  diverse  w^orlds,  each  wholly 
sphered,  each  sufiicing  for  its  adapted  dwellers. 

What  a  variety  of  living !  Behold  the  world  of  the 
Musician,  bright  and  beautiful  as  a  loka  of  the  Buddhist 
heaven !  a  flexible  world  close-touching  and  almost 
blending  with  that  of  the  Artist  or  the  Poet.  Behold 
the  world  of  the  Philosopher  which,  like  the  world  of 
the  Astronomer,  seems  to  its  denizen  but  an  islet  in  the 
ocean  of  mind-baffling  immensity.  Quite  apart  from 
these  revolves  the  solid  and  well-defined,  but  somewhat 
narrow,  world  of  the  man  of  mercantile  pursuits,  and 
more  remote,  under  monotonous  skies,  the  dull  world 

33 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

of  the  unthinking,  drear  as  a  desert  save  here  and 
there  some  little  turf  of  almost  withered  green. 

However,  the  world  of  the  Musician  claims  our 
attention  ;  let  us  look  with  his  eyes ;  hear  with  his 
ears;  understand  with  his  intuitions.  All  else  shut 
out,  his  world  is  subdivisible  :  within  it  is  discovered 
another.  Lured  on  by  the  shine  of  golden  wings,  and 
the  delicate  cantabile  of  angel  voices  ineffably  sweet 
and  pure,  we  enter  where  dwells  the  soul  of  a  true 
tone-poet,  the  soul  of  Frederic  Chopin. 

In  Chopin,  the  subject  of  this  study,  the  blood  of 
two  nations  met  and  mingled.  The  France  of  his 
father,  and  the  Poland  of  his  mother,  could  each  with 
equal  justice  claim  him  as  its  own.  Chopin  was  born  in 
the  vicinity  of  Warsaw,  on  March  i,  1809,  and  in  the 
capital  city  of  the  Grand  Duchy,  created  by  Napoleon, 
he  was  educated  musically  until  the  age  of  twelve,  an 
age  when  the  average  musician  enters  upon  his  pupilage. 
Then  it  was  deemed  best  by  his  professors  that  he  be 
left  to  the  self-development  of  his  unique  individuality. 

Naturally  our  precocious  child,  our  future  composer 
sui  generis,  was  now  the  pet  of  the  aristocracy ;  the 
plaything  of  that  class  which,  as  a  whole,  not  only  in 
Warsaw,  but  also  in  pretty  much  the  world  over,  lived, 
as  now  it  lives,  to  be  amused  and  served  by  those  who, 
in  a  land  of  democratic  opportunities,  would  soon  be 
its  acknowledged  superiors. 

34 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

For  an  artist  wholly  unique,  a  smoothing  and  polish- 
ing to  the  many  exactions  of  polite  society  is  an  under- 
taking questionable  indeed.  To  come  into  outward 
conformity  with  mere  convention  is  to  imperil  the 
freedom  of  his  inner  individuality.  The  actual  effect 
of  such  a  course  on  the  genius  of  Chopin  cannot  be 
determined  ;  that  it  survived  the  ordeal  is  proof  enough 
of  its  virility  and  tenacity  of  purpose. 

As  we  have  hinted,  the  world  of  the  Musician,  unlike 
that  of  the  severely  practical  man,  has  no  fixed  diam- 
eter ;  elastic,  it  widens  at  his  will ;  at  the  bidding  of 
his  sympathies  it  stretches  until  co-extensive  with  the 
globe.  Thus  it  gathers  into  its  circumference  every 
land  where  live  and  labor  his  brethren  in  the  art.  And 
so  we  find  our  youthful  composer  looking  beyond  the 
limits  of  his  Warsaw,  looking  and  longing  for  physical 
contact  with  that  with  which  his  heart  was  already  in 
rapport ;  Dresden  and  Prague  and  Berlin,  but  chiefly 
Vienna  the  renowned,  the  rich  and  glorious  with  the 
memories  and  bequeathings  of  Haydn  and  Mozart  and 
Beethoven  and  Schubert.  There  could  be  heard,  in  its 
unfading  loveliness,  the  "  Freischiitz  "  of  Weber  in  whom 
Romanticism  first  wakened  like  a  rose  at  dawn.  There 
such  pianists  as  Czerny  and  Hummel  would  discover  to 
Chopin  his  failings,  or  prove  his  merits  to  be  all  his 
own.  And  then,  far  off  as  the  horizon  of  his  day- 
dreams, upgrew  the  sumptuous  city  on  the  Seine,  the 

35 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

siren  city  sweet  of  voice  and  fair  of  form ;  the  heart- 
less, hope-wrecking  city  beneath  whose  mocking  e)'^e  the 
unheard  Wagner  in  after  years  must  chafe  and  struggle 
and  starve  and  almost  cease  to  be. 

Chopin  was  instinctively  and  wholly  a  romanticist. 
Though  deemed  ultra  by  many  a  contemporary  critic, 
to  us  he  stands  revealed  the  great  tone-poet  of  the 
piano ;  the  Keats,  or  rather  the  Shelley  of  musicians ; 
the  inimitable  modern  from  whom  the  groping  and 
straining  virtuoso-producers  of  to-day  have  much  retro- 
graded. 

As  a  pianoforte  writer,  Chopin  has  only  Beethoven 
as  compeer,  but  each  in  his  way  is  supreme.  The 
supremacy  of  Beethoven  is  th8.t  of  the  symphonist  in 
whose  brain  the  orchestra  sounds  ever  a  multitudinous 
variety  of  tone  color.  The  piano  was  his  dearest 
friend,  the  orchestra  his  great  heart's  love  not  to 
be  shut  out,  not  to  be  forgotten,  because  of  friend- 
ship's closest,  warmest  hour ;  and  so  the  orchestra 
would  crowd  and  cramp  itself  in  the  piano.  On  the 
other  hand,  his  chosen  instrument  was  to  Chopin  his 
all  of  abiding  friendship  and  passionate,  absorbing 
love,  and  every  height  and  every  deep  of  his  being  is 
therein  contained ;  his  every  unclouded  gem,  set  in 
ornate  and  exquisite  workmanship,  his  every  matched 
and  strung  pearl,  finds  there  a  golden  casket.  Chopin 
made  of  his  Erard,  or  his  Ple5'el,  a  novel  instrument. 

36 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

No  longer  of  uniform  tint,  its  tone  colors  were  yet 
unlike  those  from  the  orchestral  blending  of  wood  and 
metal  and  string. 

Ere  long  our  composer-virtuoso  has  met  and  meas- 
ured many  of  his  renowned  contemporaries,  and,  by 
fair  comparison,  he  knows  to  a  nicety  his  own  status ; 
already  he  anticipates  the  acclaim  of  a  just  future. 
Such  seership  is  necessary  to  the  man  of  genius. 
Foreknowledge  is  his  saving  rock  amidst  the  merciless 
seas  of  ridicule.  Clinging  to  that  stay,  he  awaits  the 
spent  fury  of  the  storm,  the  lulling  of  winds,  the  level- 
ing of  waves. 

For  the  sake  of  comparison  let  us,  from  the  vantage 
ground  of  this  present,  glance  at  the  chief  musical 
celebrities  contacted  by  Chopin  in  the  years  of  his 
youthful  activity.  Thalberg,  smooth  and  faultless 
executant,  delight  of  the  dilettante  and  the  superficial 
amateur,  was  throwing  off  a  series  of  showy  but  withal 
empty  transcriptions  of  which  his  "  Mose  in  Egitto  " 
may  be  held  the  best.  As  a  moulder  of  musicians, 
notably  Liszt,  and  as  a  developer  of  technique,  the  hard- 
working Czerny  was  proving  of  immense  value,  but  as 
a  composer  he  was  too  diligent,  not  waiting  for  that 
inspiration  which  cannot  be  forced.  Of  Hummel, 
much  over-rated  in  those  days,  the  best  thing  sayable 
is  that  he  influenced  the  shaping  of  Chopin's  concertos, 
the  least  faulty  of  his  larger  works.     Moscheles,  the 

37 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

tutor  of  Mendelsshon,  was  a  musician  much  esteemed 
by  Chopin  who  deemed  it  a  privilege  to  play  the  bass 
to  the  composer's  treble  in  his  chief  pianoforte  works. 
Unlike  certain  of  our  modern  pianists,  Kalkbrenner 
was  no  muscular  virtuoso  venting  his  rage  upon  the 
keyboard.  He  was,  on  the  contrary,  a  performer  of 
refinement  and  precision  ;  one  who  could  claim  certain 
excellencies  akin  to  those  of  Chopin.  But  alas  for 
human  vanity !  his  great  show  pieces,  the  cause  of 
much  self-gratulation,  have  vanished  from  every  con- 
cert repertory  and  every  musical  collection  save  that 
of  the  antiquary.  Mendelssohn,  despite  his  eminence, 
had  the  backward-looking  eye ;  much  in  his  matter 
had  already  been  sung  and  played,  but  not  with  the 
grace  and  charm  of  that  accomplished  scholar.  And 
yet  is  the  "  Elijah  "  a  triumph,  a  thing  enduring,  an 
epitome  of  all  his  powers.  Oak-ribbed,  wealth-laden 
voyager  on  the  sea  of  Time,  how  bravely  it  breasts  the 
waves  that  long  have  whelmed  the  wrecks  of  mediocre 
talent  and  seeming  genius  and  empty  pretence  !  Schu- 
mann, discoverer  of  the  genius  of  Chopin,  was  a 
musician  and  thinker,  an  ever-broadening  cosmopol- 
itan, a  radical  in  the  van  of  esthetic  progress  and, 
inevitably,  the  soul  of  the  new  musical  romanticism. 

Almost  any  page,  almost  any  stanza  of  Shelley  — 
most  ethereal  of  word-poets  —  would  indicate  an  unob- 
structed outpouring  which  the  first  drafts  of  even  his 

38 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

wholly  sustained  inspirations  quite  disprove.  Beetho- 
ven's collected  sketch-books  are  a  study  in  the  evolution 
of  themes  afterward  impressed  with  the  seal  of  spon- 
taneity. We  are  told  by  one  who  ought  to  know,  that 
Chopin's  every  opus  was  born  only  after  soul-travail 
both  long  and  sore.  Against  these  curious  facts  can 
be  set  this  apparent  contradiction  :  facility  is  the  rule 
among  the  merely  talented,  and  many  such  have  with 
ease  dashed  off  their  best  efforts,  of  which  doing  they 
are  wont  to  boast  because,  to  the  popular  way  of 
thinking,  facility  is  proof  of  genius.  Now  why  should 
Shelley  and  Beethoven  and  Chopin  wrestle  with  the 
idea,  and  Pollok  and  Czerny  and  their  kind  be  so 
easily  victorious  ? 

As  we  have  said,  our  human  world  is  subdivisible 
into  manifold  states  of  consciousness,  each  a  world  to 
its  dwellers.  The  world  of  the  man  of  talent  may  be, 
and  usually  is,  but  a  step  inward  from  the  world  of  the 
multitude ;  hence  few  obstacles  hinder  communication 
between  these  nearly-related  worlds.  The  ideas  of  the 
inner  are  with  ease  translated  to  the  understanding 
of  the  outer.  Evidently  this  is  untrue  of  those  inmost 
worlds  where  dwell  the  deep-  and  high-dreaming  Poet 
and  Musician  whose  respective  domains  are  almost 
outside  of  time  and  space,  those  limitations  wherewith 
the  human  mind  divides  the  known  from  the  unknown, 
the  sensible  from  the  super-sensible,  the  finite  from  the 

39 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

Infinite.  Having  in  them  little  or  nothing  of  the  quan- 
titative, the  ideas  of  those  worlds  elude  the  mental 
grasp  of  all  save  the  finely-organized  man  of  genius. 

How  to  come  into  touch  with  the  great,  common 
world  by  giving  fixed  form  to  that  which  is  formless 
and  by  rendering  tangible  the  intangible,  making  seen 
the  unseen,  felt  the  unfelt,  and  heard  the  unheard,  is 
the  problem  of  Genius.  It  was  the  problem  of  Michel 
Angelo  before  the  unchiselled  "  David  "  ;  the  problem 
of  Raphael  musing  upon  the  Madonnaless  canvas ;  the 
problem  of  the  absorbed  Beethoven  when,  in  his  seem- 
ingly aimless  meanderings,  the  trees  by  the  roadside 
and  in  the  forest  would  prompt  him  to  solution  with 
their  whispered  "  Holy  !  Holy  !  "  and  it  was  the  problem 
of  Chopin  as  in  the  quiet  of  his  study,  apart  from  the 
roar  of  the  great  city,  the  empty  page  tormented  him 
with  the  thought  of  unwritten  and  perhaps  unwritable 
beauties. 

That  within  the  space  of  twenty-four  days,  Handel 
penned  the  notes  of  his  most  glorious  work,  proves 
nothing  but  his  enormous  powers  of  mental  concentra- 
tion, and  the  endurance  of  a  brain  supported  by  a 
vigorous  body ;  but  to  the  vital  question  :  How  long 
had  "  The  Messiah  "  been  maturing  in  him  ?  history 
affords  no  conclusive  answer.  Rossini  was  no  doubt  a 
facile  composer,  yet  from  what  soul-deep  his  operas 
came  is  proved  by   his    deliberate   estimate   of   their 

40 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

longevity.     He   believed  that  as  an  entirety   nothing 
but  "II  Barbiere  "  would  survive. 

The  well- attested  fact  that  Beethoven  and  Chopin, 
those  cautious  and  self-critical  composers,  were  both 
extempore  performers  par  excellence,  goes  far  toward 
proving  the  impromptu  inferior  to  the  finished  after- 
product.  And  does  not  all  this  favor  our  view  that 
from  the  birth-throes,  and  not  from  the  painlessness 
of  Genius,  are  born  the  masterpieces  of  every  art  ? 


II 


Genius  is  essentially  sympathetic  and  would  draw 
all  men  into  rapport  with  its  world  of  light  and  love. 
Companioned  it  must  be,  aye,  close  companioned  I 
But  descend  it  will  never  because  to  Genius  its  world 
embodies  more  of  reality  than  does  all  this  terrestial 
globe. 

Happy  the  master  gathering  around  him  his  little 
following!  Happy  indeed  the  genius,  the  solitary 
being,  who  finds  among  men  an  ideal  friend ;  one  to 
whom  self-explanation,  so  hateful  to  Genius,  is  need- 
less ;  one  who  knows  instinctively  the  soul  life  of  the 
other  !  To  Genius  that  friend  is  a  proof  of  its  mission  ; 
a  witness  that  it  lives  not  a  thing  more  useless  than  the 
most  ordinary  mortal ;  an  assurance  that  it  yet  will 
come    into    the    fullness    of  its   own.     Such   a   friend 

41 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

Chopin  was  now  to  find  within  that  great  Paris  which 
Hke  a  gigantic  lodestone  was  drawing  him  to  herself. 

Franz  Liszt,  the  Hungarian  composer,  pianist  and 
literateur,  was  born  in  1811,  and  in  1831,  the  date  of 
Chopin's  advent  in  the  French  capital,  he  was  but 
twenty  years  of  age,  and  so  by  two  years  the  junior  of 
the  Pole.  Soon  the  fame  of  the  younger  man  would 
eclipse  even  that  of  Kalkbrenner,  esteemed  the  first 
pianist  of  the  day.  Liszt  was  steadily  nearing  an 
eminence  ever  afterward  his  own  against  all  comers, 
that  of  the  world's  unparalleled  pianoforte  virtuoso. 

The  artist  who,  in  days  to  come,  would  first  divine 
and  adequately  measure  the  comprehensiveness  of 
Wagner;  the  timely  helper  who  would  deem  it  a  duty, 
a  privilege,  to  aid  and  cheer  the  impecunious  political 
refugee  in  the  despondent  years  of  his  exile  ;  the  whole- 
hearted enthusiast  whose  determined  arm  would  open 
for  the  composer  of  "  Lohengrin,"  the  close-shut  door 
of  the  Temple  of  Fame,  was  the  friend  in  whom  Chopin 
now  saw  reflected  his  own  peculiar  genius.  As  the 
painter,  stepping  backward  from  his  easel,  scans  his 
work  as  a  whole,  and  in  the  most  favorable  light,  so, 
from  the  view-point  of  Liszt's  intuitive  rendering, 
Chopin  better  estimated  his  own  productions  than 
could  otherwise  have  been  possible. 

That  consummate  interpretation  of  a  work  proves 
not  one's  abiUty  to  create  its  like   is    shown   by   the 

42 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

coming  together  of  Chopin  and  Liszt.  While  Liszt  was 
indubitably  of  advantage  to  Chopin,  the  latter  in  turn 
reacted  upon  the  former.  In  the  nature  of  the  fiery 
Hungarian,  and  that  of  the  dreamy  Pole,  were  those 
resemblances  and  differences  which  make  high  friend- 
ship a  possibility  and  also  a  means  of  mutual  growth 
through  reciprocity  of  ideas. 

The  fascinating  and  dominating  Liszt  was  by  nature 
a  Bohemian.  From  first  to  last  he  dwelt  in  the  realm 
of  those  laxities  and  unconventionalities  which  dismay 
the  ordinary  mortal,  but  whose  glamour  is  over  the  life 
of  many  an  artist.  And  yet,  despite  every  shortcoming, 
Liszt  had  that  which  was  much  indeed,  a  virtue  fre- 
quently the  saving  one  of  genius,  to  wit,  the  artistic 
conscience. 

Beneath  a  demeanor  disguising  rather  than  revealing 
his  inner  self,  Chopin  was  an  ardent  soul,  a  Polish 
patriot  from  whose  heart  overflowed,  to  his  every  page, 
the  sorrows  of  his  native  land.  Those  sorrows  were  a 
cloud  shadowing  the  radiance  of  his  ideal  world,  and 
at  times  dulling  it  almost  to  the  sombre  hues  of  this 
earth,  begetter  of  many  sorrows. 

It  is  regrettable  that  Chopin  sought  to  bind  within 
the  hmits  of  conventional  forms,  already  half  outgrown, 
his  poetical  ideas  amenable  only  to  the  requirements 
of  those  freer  forms  for  which  Berlioz  and  Schumann 
were  striving,  and  to  which  Wagner  ultimately  attained. 

43 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

In  his  Impromptus,  and  a  few  other  ventures  beyond 
self-imposed  barriers,  Chopin  made  most  praiseworthy 
use  of  freedom,  but  quickly  he  returns  to  contempla- 
tion of  his  beloved  Mozart,  that  perfect  master  of 
classical  form.  Naturally  the  polished  frequenter  of 
the  Parisian  drawing-room  and  salon,  found  no  last- 
ing pleasure  in  the  wild  freedom  and  amplitude  of  the 
forest  of  Romanticism.  The  change  was  too  abrupt 
and  novel.  Those  far-reaching  vistas  of  unfrequented 
shade  !  How  different  from  the  metropolitan  thorough- 
fare !  Those  mighty  but  fantastically-growing  trees 
thick-planted  by  Nature's  careless  hand !  those  never- 
trimmed  and  irregular  branches !  those  fallen  and  dis- 
mantled trunks !  How  unlike  the  well-kept  parks  of 
Paris  and  Versailles ! 

While  composing,  Chopin  never  quite  divorced  him- 
self from  the  keyboard  of  his  piano,  and  yet  the  writer 
who  would  attain  to  untrammeled  expression,  in  both 
matter  and  form,  should  compose  beneath  a  roof  no 
narrower  than  the  dome  of  heaven.  Let  the  study 
be  his  reference  room,  his  library,  and,  for  conven- 
ience, his  place  of  final  elaboration.  Like  Beethoven 
and  Wordsworth,  let  him  receive  at  first  hand  the 
impartings  of  Nature  that  needed  teacher  of  us 
all. 

In  the  heart  of  Chopin  the  melodies  of  his  beloved 
Poland,   mingling  with   his   own   imaginings,   became 

44 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

invested  with  a  subtle,  poetical  charm  and  a  delicate 
sweetness  idealizing  their  own  quaint  loveliness. 

The  Mazurka !  does  it  not  bring  the  peasant  gather- 
ing on  the  green  ;  the  evening  or  the  holiday  of  sway- 
ing forms  and  agile  feet  and  rustic  beauty  in  the  grace- 
ful round  ?  The  Polonaise !  does  it  not  bring  the 
brilliant  hall ;  the  jewelled  fair ;  the  stately-moving, 
king-led  company  of  lords  and  noble  dames  ?  Yes, 
such  were  the  scenes  which,  to  the  dances  of  his 
people,  Chopin  had  conjured  from  the  happy,  bygone 
days.  How  appealing  this  music  to  those  of  the  old 
Polish  nobility  then  finding  in  Paris  their  most  con- 
genial abode  in  exile !  Largely  through  the  influence 
of  these  the  Parisian  success  of  Chopin  was  speedier, 
although  more  circumscribed,  than  that  of  Meyerbeer, 
who,  only  by  laborious  and  painstaking  adaptation 
of  his  methods  to  the  requirements  of  the  French 
operatic  stage,  won  the  Parisian  public  and  brought 
them  to  their  knees  before  the  shrine  of  "Robert." 

In  the  homes  of  rank  and  wealth,  Chopin  now  min- 
gles with  princes,  ministers,  ambassadors  and  literary 
notables.  Titled  ladies  are  his  pupils  and,  because  he 
would  have  it  so,  he  deems  his  musical  self  best  under- 
stood by  the  lionizing  fashionables  of  French  society 
who,  in  fact,  looked  not  beneath  the  finished,  but  by 
no  means  robust  virtuoso,  and  polished  gentleman 
conforming  to  their  every  convention. 

45 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

The  fashionables  of  French  society !  Oh  for  a 
moment  natural  and  true  amidst  the  false  and  artificial 
hours  !  A  candid,  soul-sprung  greeting  to  shame  the 
outward  suavity  where  envy  rankles,  or  where  hatred 
burns  within  !  Oh  for  a  laden  word  to  prove  the  hol- 
lowness  of  empty  tongues !  A  normal  heart  of  inno- 
cence in  that  blase  assembly  !  Oh  for  an  individuality 
unrepressed  ;  a  potent  unit  in  that  crowd  of  merest 
ciphers ! 

It  is  almost  incredible  that  in  such  environment 
Chopin  composed  many  of  his  noblest  works.  His 
Rondo  in  C  minor  Op.  i,  published  in  1825,  when  he 
was  but  sixteen  years  of  age,  and  therefore  in  the  old 
Warsaw  days,  had  announced  the  advent  of  a  writer 
of  the  highest  rank,  one  authoritatively  proclaimed  by 
Schumann  on  the  appearance  of  the  variations  in  B 
flat  Op.  2.  Arriving  in  Paris  late  in  the  year  1831, 
the  man  of  two-and-twenty  was  already  known  to 
musicians  like  Franz  Liszt  and  Ferdinand  Hiller,  as 
creator  of  such  music  as  the  Concerto  in  F  minor,  the 
Concerto  in  E  minor,  and  the  Funeral  March  in  C 
minor.  This  last  was  afterward  eclipsed  by  the  great 
march  in  the  B  flat  minor  Sonata.  But  the  bulk  of 
Chopin's  pianoforte  works  was  written  during  the 
next  seventeen  years,  and  despite  adverse  conditions 
other  than  those  of  environment. 


46 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

III 

Chopin's  compositions,  aside  from  his  Waltzes,  were 
in  his  day  too  novel  and  strange  to  attract  more  than 
the  discerning  and  progressive  few.  Obtuse  and  igno- 
rant critics  vented  their  wrath  upon  them.  Even 
Moscheles  found  them  full  of  abrupt  and  harsh  modu- 
lations, and  the  attitude  of  Mendelssohn  was  one  of 
mingled  hke  and  loathing.  Liszt  alone  accepted  them 
in  their  entirety.  Because  of  all  this,  their  inevitably 
small  sale  made  Chopin's  office  of  composer  compara- 
tively an  unremunerative  one. 

Unlike  Beethoven  who,  from  choice  as  well  as  neces- 
sity, lived  most  frugally  and  solitary  as  a  lion  in  his 
den,  Chopin  was  somewhat  of  a  Sybarite  in  his  tastes, 
and,  furthermore,  improvident  and  accustomed  to  ex- 
travagant expenditures.  Therefore,  while  esteeming 
himself  at  par  value  as  a  composer,  he  was  of  necessity 
a  teacher  also.  In  addition  to  the  distractions  and 
fatigues  of  regular  lesson-giving,  an  ever-present  mis- 
fortune, a  wasting  and  fatal  malady,  crippled  what 
should  have  been  his  years  of  physical  prime.  Yet 
despite  all  that  certainly  hindered  and  probably 
impaired  the  result  of  Chopin's  Parisian  years  of  cre- 
ative effort,  that  result  may  be  summarized  as  follows : 

First  and  foremost,  are  those  "Soul-animating  strains, 
alas   too   few !  "    the   four   incomparable    Ballades  of 

47 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

which  Schumann  said  that  a  poet  inspired  them,  and 
a  poet  might  easily  write  words  to  them.  In  the  Bal- 
lades, Chopin  encompasses  a  height  and  breadth  and 
depth  elsewhere  un attained  in  his  works.  Here  the 
local  is  indeed  outgrown,  and  almost  the  universal  is 
in  the  sweep  of  his  vision.  Abreast  of  the  bardic  view, 
he  develops  a  world  theme,  he  rings  a  story  of  the 
antique  and  the  modern. 

Next  in  enumeration  come  the  great  Polonaises, 
epics  of  Poland  in  heroic  meter,  Iliads  of  battle  on 
her  native  soil.  The  bitter  taunt  of  rage  and  scorn ; 
the  hurled  defiance  and  the  fierce  reply ;  the  rush,  the 
crash  of  the  onset ;  the  broken  swords  and  splintered 
lances  ;  the  vanquished  rider  and  the  fallen  war-horse  ; 
the  anguished  cries  of  dying  men  ;  the  hopeless  wail  of 
captives  ;  the  harsh  rattle  of  galling  chains  ;  the  deep 
and  solemn  notes  of  dirge.  Iliads  of  Poland !  Iliads 
of  her  olden  glory  and  her  prone  defeat ;  and  then  an 
Iliad  of  her  proud-arisen  days  to  be ! 

In  marked  contrast,  and  therefore  proving  the  ver- 
satility of  Chopin,  we  have  what  outlasts  a  thousand  ball- 
room waltzes  every  one  of  which,  like  the  gay  butterfly, 
joys  through  its  little  day  and  then  is  gone  forever. 
Of  the  poetic  and  perfect  Waltzes  of  Chopin,  evidently 
not  written  for  the  mere  dancer,  may  be  instanced  the 
one  in  A  flat  op.  42  ;  also  the  set  of  three  op.  34. 
The    second    of   them,    tenderly    melancholy  in   both 

48 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

minor  and  major,  was  an  especial  favorite  of  its  author. 
Nor  should  we  overlook  the  celebrated  waltz  in  D 
flat  which,  while  fulfilling  all  musical  requirements,  has 
proved  universally  popular,  being,  in  fact,  what  its 
history  indicates,  the  unpremeditated  outpour  of  a 
happy  hour. 

The  greater  number  of  the  forty-one  Mazurkas  pub- 
lished by  Chopin,  date  from  the  Paris  period.  They 
are  easy  of  execution  and  often  brief,  some  being  held 
within  the  limits  of  sixty  measures.  In  these  Mazur- 
kas the  poet  of  the  epic  turns  to  polish  the  line,  the 
stanza  ;  the  painter  of  the  heroic  perfects  the  minia- 
ture. Each  Mazurka  is  a  tiny  picture  of  Polish  life ; 
a  little  draught  from  the  well  of  Polish  folk-song. 
How  readily  these  dances  lend  themselves  to  an 
exaggerated  rubato,  the  common  fault  of  would-be 
interpreters ! 

Because  of  its  noble,  singing  quality,  the  key  of  D 
flat  was  chosen  for  some  of  Chopin's  most  exquisite 
melodies.  In  this  markedly  individual  key,  whose  tone 
color  is  but  the  veil  of  some  unimagined  splendor,  was 
set  the  "Berceuse,"  most  ethereal  and  lovely  of  cradle 
songs.  A  sweet  murmur  of  waters,  it  glides  and  ripples 
and  gently  falls  from  no  earth-born  spring.  No  upland 
snows  make  clear  its  limpid,  winding  way.  From 
loftier  far  than  ever  rain-clouds  find,  the  home  of  inno- 
cence which  slumbering  infancy  beholds,  it  brings  of 

49 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

Wisdom's  fount  what,  hidden  from  the   wise,  is    yet 
revealed  to  babes. 

Another  of  the  Paris  pieces  is  the  somewhat  long 
Barcarolle  in  nocturne  form ;  an  Italian  scene  beneath 
the  skies  of  Venice.  Not  the  palaced  Venice  of 
marble  and  porphyry  and  alabaster,  but  that  mobile 
Venice  which  mirrors  the  rising  moon  touched  at  times 
by  filmy  shades,  yet  light  enough  for  lovers  borne 
upon  the  sparkling  tides.  Though  devoid  of  striking 
contrasts,  this  Barcarolle  contains  probably  more  of 
variety  than  Mendelssohn  could  have  woven  into  it. 

In  Paris  were  composed  all  save  one  of  the  nineteen 
Nocturnes  bearing  the  name  of  Chopin.  On  these,  and 
the  Polonaise  in  A  major,  and  such  Waltzes  as  op.  i8 
in  E  flat,  mostly  rests  his  popular  estimate. 

As  a  producer  in  this  lighter  vein,  Chopin  encounters 
no  rival.  A  few,  a  very  few  of  the  earlier  Nocturnes 
betray  the  influence  of  John  Field  originator  of  this 
somewhat  sentimental  style  of  salon  music ;  but  shortly 
the  Chopinesque  quality  asserts  itself  and  lo,  the  night 
of  lulled  winds,  heavy  with  the  tropical  odor  of  flowers  ! 
Night  of  indolent  southern  stars,  and  the  chaste  Diana 
grown  languorous  and  tender  !  Night  of  little  clouds 
that  weep  they  know  not  why!  Night  of  the  bashful, 
subdued  bird  that  lifts  not  to  the  cheerful  sun  his 
notes  of  love  and  grief  and  yearning. 

Without  underestimating  the  musical  and  technical 

50 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

value  of  dementi's  "Gradus  ad  Parnassum  "  on  whose 
broad  and  solid  foundation  rests  all  modern  pianoforte 
playing,  and  without  in  the  least  belittling  the  contri- 
butions of  Cramer,  it  may  be  asserted  that  the  Etudes 
of  Chopin  are  revelations  in  technique.  Of  all  their 
class,  they  alone  anticipate  the  virtuoso  requirements 
of  to-day,  while  some,  like  Nos.  3  and  6  of  op.  10,  are, 
as  inspired  music,  unmatched  in  the  world's  repertory 
of  piano  studies.  Painstaking  authorities  have  edited, 
and  eminent  critics  have  almost  extravagantly  praised 
them.  Hunaker  holds  them  monumental  of  our 
nineteenth  century  attainment  in  piano  music.  How- 
ever, Chopin's  twenty-seven  Etudes  have  little  place 
in  this  present  enumeration,  for,  excepting  two  or 
three  in  the  second  book,  op.  25,  they,  like  the 
Concertos,  the  Bolero,  the  Rondos  op.  i  and  op.  16, 
and  the  Variations  op.  2,  all  of  them  antedate  the 
year  1831. 

The  weight  of  evidence  would  prove  that  of  the 
twenty-four  Preludes  op.  28,  the  bulk  was  composed 
prior  to  Chopin's  visit  to  Majorka  in  1839.  Schumann 
called  them  "  ruins,  eagle  feathers  all  strangely  inter- 
mingled." To  Kullak  they  are  '*  little  masterpieces  of 
the  first  rank."  Hunaker  holds  them  "a  sheaf  of 
moods."  Rubinstein  believes  them  the  pearls  of  Cho- 
pin's works.  They  are  in  fact  autobiographical  poems 
in  brief  stanzas.     Though  we  grant  the  excellence  and 

51 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

completeness  of  many,  and  the  individuality  of  all 
these  Preludes,  certain  of  them  seemed  fragmentary. 
The  sixteen  measures  comprised  in  No.  7,  may  be  the 
sole  remnant  of  some  discarded  Mazurka.  Those  thir- 
teen measures  of  solemn  moving  chords  in  C  minor, 
the  total  of  No.  20,  suggest  the  episode  in  the  G 
minor  Nocturne,  and  may  have  been  preserved  from 
some  such  composition. 

We  have,  by  Chopin,  four  Impromptus  all  written 
later  than  the  year  183 1  :  op.  29  in  A  flat,  op.  s^  in 
F  sharp  major,  op.  51  in  G  flat,  and  the  posthumous 
Fantasie  Impromptu  in  C  sharp  minor.  The  word 
Impromptu  is  usually  a  misnomer  betraying,  to  the 
discerning,  the  vanity  of  an  author  who  would  have 
his  public  suppose  him  capable  of  off-hand  effusions  in 
all  ways  superior  to  the  careful  work  of  others. 

That  Chopin  is  here  not  altogether  innocent  is  at 
once  shown  by  the  premeditated  consecutive  minor 
ninths  between  the  melody  and  accompaniment  in  the 
first  and  second  measures  of  op.  29.  The  six  intro- 
ductory measures  of  op.  36  are  a  carefully  written 
two-part  bass  which,  blending  with  the  treble  melody 
entering  at  the  seventh  measure,  forms  with  it  a  three- 
part  harmony  worthy  of  the  most  painstaking  writer. 
In  op.  51,  Chopin  is  chromatic  and  winding  and  pre- 
meditating as  is  his  wont.  Op.  66  comes  nearest  the 
title,  "  Impromptu."     Interest  here  centers  in  the  right 

52 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

hand,  which,  throughout  the  first  and  the  third  sections, 
is  an  uninterrupted  torrent  of  semiquavers,  and,  in  the 
D  flat  middle  movement,  is  a  sustained  and  melodious 
cantabile  which  yet  is  not  the  master's  true  cantabile, 
that  noble  and  tender  and  pensive  poetry  pervading, 
for  instance,  the  con  anima  of  the  B  flat  minor  Scherzo. 

The  instrumental  music  of  Haydn  and  Mozart  fur- 
nishes many  models  of  the  true  Scherzo.  The  Sonatas 
and  Symphonies  of  Beethoven  exhibit  in  its  fullness  this 
evolution  of  the  old  Minuet,  but,  coming  to  the  four 
Scherzos  of  Chopin,  the  mere  classifier  is  puzzled  and 
halted  while  the  real  musician  is  exalted  and  led  onward. 
Leaving  the  consideration  of  name  and  structure  and 
logical  sequence  to  the  hypercritical,  he  enters  without 
cavil  this  unique,  forest-encompassed  temple  of  art 
where  joy  and  laughter  indeed  are  not,  for  an  elegiac 
sadness  murmurs  from  the  over-roofing  green,  and 
oftentimes  the  winds  without,  those  whisperers  in  their 
woodland  tongue,  will  swell  to  impassioned  euphony  or 
hopeless,  wild  lament,  and  suddenly  midst  Nature's 
momentary  hush,  a  solemn,  deep-toned  temple  hymn  is 
breathed  around,  and  then,  above,  the  swaying  branches 
make  their  moan  anew,  and  hark  !  the  harsh,  capricious 
blast  is  pouring  once  again  its  tale  of  wretchedness  and 
woe. 

The  mind  of  Chopin,  like  that  of  every  man  and 
woman  of  true  genius,  exhibits  both  male  and  female 

53 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

characteristics,  for  the  sexless  human  soul,  the  source 
of  those  characteristics,  would  stamp  itself  clearly  and 
wholly  on  the  impressionable  brain  of  such  as  he. 
Chopin's  masculineness,  so  often  in  abeyance,  as 
throughout  the  Nocturnes,  at  once  asserts  itself  in  the 
noble  Fantaisie  op.  49,  whose  recurring  first  figure 
requires  no  fortissimo  to  drive  it  deep  into  the  heart. 

The  true  genius  has  his  moment  when,  sole  and 
venturous,  he  lifts  him  loftier  than  the  eagle.  The 
sun  beyond  —  the  light  he  failed  to  reach  —  did  it  not 
from  the  airless  heaven  scorn  his  defeat  and  leave 
him  humbled  in  the  height  ?  And  yet  the  tree-tops, 
far  beneath  upon  the  mountain,  v/ere  proud  v/ith  wings 
that  never  dared  as  he.  Many  fanciful  and  imagina- 
tive interpretations  we  have  of  that  empyrean  flight  the 
F  minor  Fantaisie,  but,  as  if  too  conscious  of  failure 
in  the  unattainable,  the  author  would  discredit  them  all 
with  a  commonplace  explanation. 

Inevitably  the  collected  works  of  great  authors,  in 
whatever  department,  contain  that  which  as  a  whole 
adds  little  or  nothing  to  their  eminent  reputation.  Of 
the  works  of  Chopin's  mature  years,  the  Allegro  de 
Concert,  the  Taran telle,  and  the  Rondo  op.  16,  belong 
in  this  category.  And  yet  any  of  these,  the  first  espe- 
cially, would  make  famous  a  pianoforte  composer  not 
already  high  in  the  first  rank, 

Chopin,  as  we  have  seen,  studied  well  the  composi- 

54 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

tions  of  Bach,  and  to  that  study  should  be  traced  his 
comprehensive  knowledge  of  harmonic  possibilities. 
This  is  wholly  proved  by  his  every  important  work ; 
but  in  daring  how  he  distances  the  profound  and 
methodical  contrapuntist  of  Leipsic !  Only  Wagner 
and  Richard  Strauss  are  bolder  than  he.  As  a  har- 
monist Chopin  was  bent  on  notable  things,  and  with 
equal  zeal  he  essayed  that  most  difficult  and  hazardous 
of  undertakings,  the  Sonata.  Had  our  Romanticist 
but  given  to  the  pianoforte  Sonatas  of  Beethoven  some- 
what of  those  hours  devoted  to  "  The  Well-tempered 
Clavichord,"  the  effect  on  op.  35  and  op.  58,  probably 
had  been  an  enrichment  of  our  repertory  of  high-class 
piano  Sonatas.  After  all,  the  Sonata  is  a  perfected 
growth  of  Classicism,  and  so  lends  itself  most  ungra- 
ciously to  the  looser  treatment  of  the  Romanticist,  for 
it  demands  not  only  sequence  of  ideas  and  systematic 
development  of  themes,  but  also  a  unification  of  its 
constituent  movements  that  as  a  whole  it  shall  be 
homogeneous. 

During  his  Parisian  career,  Chopin  composed  three 
Sonatas,  op.  35  and  op.  58,  for  piano,  and  op.  65,  for 
piano  and  violincello.  This  last,  a  most  unequal  work, 
has  provoked  more  of  adverse  criticism  than  any  other 
bearing  his  name. 

Chopin's  chief  defect,  one  almost  always  apparent, 
originated  in  his  somewhat  narrow  sympathies,  which, 

55 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

though  deep,  did  yet  by  no  means  fathom  the  joys 
underlying  and  destined  to  outlast  the  waves  of 
sorrow,  which,  to  his  circumscribed  vision,  were  suffi- 
cient for  the  engulfing  of  the  world.  What,  we  ask, 
was  the  partition,  the  virtual  obliteration  of  Poland,  to 
that  universal  freedom,  which,  since  the  Napoleonic 
days,  was  known  as  a  blessing  yet  to  be  ?  As  already 
said,  Chopin  allowed  these  earth-clouds  of  sorrow  to 
darken  greatly  the  radiance  of  his  ideal  world.  The 
pessimist  could  not  sink  himself  in  the  deeper  and 
wider  optimist.  We  suspect  his  predilection  for  the 
gay  and  thoughtless  dwellers  on  the  surface  of  life,  to 
be  but  desire  to  rid  himself  of  a  weight  of  sadness 
engendered  by  solitary  musings. 

The  Sonata  should  be  the  outpouring  of  a  heart 
attuned  to  every  chord  of  life ;  a  heart  capable  of 
universal  sympathies.  Nevertheless,  the  supreme 
expression  of  that  heart  is  joy,  a  prophecy  hopeful  as 
a  Christmas  greeting  to  the  world.  Let  us  turn  to  a 
consideration  of  op.  35  in  B  flat  minor,  for  there,  as 
nowhere  else,  Chopin  betrays  the  defects  of  his 
qualities. 

The  four  vague  mtroductory  measures,  "  Grave," 
attempt  the  expression  of  unutterable  woe  whose  pain- 
ful fullness  is  yet  relieved  by  this  anguished  cry. 
During  the  next  four  measures  the  soul,  still  over- 
burdened, meditates  a  more  adequate  expression,  and, 

S6 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

at  the  Agitato,  again  attempts  its  story  in  what  proves 
but  an  interrupted  and  broken  eloquence  of  grief  whose 
poignancy  soon  softens  to  tender,  sweet  regret.  This 
presently  swells  to  passionate  longing  as  for  some  far- 
off  good.  But  alas  for  expectance !  Alas  for  every 
looked-for  happiness  gilded  by  the  sunlight  of  a  day 
that  shall  not  be  !  This  last  mood,  so  characteristic  of 
Chopin,  ends  the  first  section  of  the  first  movement, 
and  then  suddenly  but  inevitably  come  back  the  old 
brooding  and  the  tearful,  sob-choked  utterance.  And 
now  a  calmer  moment  for,  as  from  the  Sun  of  all  being, 
a  ray  of  heaven-born  cheer  finds  the  darkened  chambers 
of  the  heart ;  but  whatsover  of  hope  is  there  enkindled,  is, 
by  sorrow's  unstayable  fountain,  soon  made  cold  again. 

In  almost  no  one  succeeding  bar  of  the  four  move- 
ments comprised  in  this  so-called  Sonata,  does  a  note 
of  real  joy  leap  forth  from  the  funereal  throng.  Even 
the  piu  lento  of  the  Scherzo  seems  to  say,  "  Whatever 
we  feel,  let  us  be  outwardly  cheerful !  "  Ah  yes  !  But 
then  this  outwardness  misleads  no  observer,  for  the 
suffused  eye  betrays  the  smiling  lips,  and  laughter  is 
the  adroit  but  ineffectual  turning  of  a  sigh. 

The  Presto  was  abhorrent  to  Mendelssohn.  A  normal, 
happy  being,  he  was  born  into  the  sunshine  and  green 
of  a  happy  world,  and  his  heart  had  not  been  plowed 
and  harrowed,  and  then  planted  with  the  black-berried 
nightshade  and  all  the  baneful  things  of  death.     So  he 

57 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

turned  from  this  "  Dark  tarn  of  Auber  "  to  the  Chopin 
of  meads  and  banks  where  no  bird  of  midnight  mood 
is  croaking  and  the  wholesome  winds  blow  never  from 
the  ''ghoul  haunted  woodland  of  Weir,"  and  the  lithe 
branches  are  waving  aeolian  at  eve. 

In  the  Sonata  op.  26  in  A  flat,  Beethoven  rightly 
placed  amidst  a  contrasting  environment  the  immortal 
"  Marcia  funebre  sulla  morte  d'un  Eroe."  Amidst  the 
almost  unmitigated  gloom  of  the  5--flat  minor  Sguata, 
Chopin  has  inserted  a  commemoration  worthy  of  many 
Ig^eroesT^'iBtTt' whowere  the  heroes  inspiring  the  Polish 
com.poser  to  one  of  his  grandest  thoughts,  the  unsur" 
passable  Funeral  March?  Yes,  who  in  truth  were 
those  dedicated  heroes  ?  Surely  not  the  great  achiev- 
ers whom  the  wide  world  esteems,  but  rather  those 
losing  heroes  hopeful  in  a  hopeless  cause ;  those 
fallen  patriots  of  Polish  blood  whose  mangled  forms 
the  iron  hoofs  of  war  had  trampled  in  the  mire  of 
battle. 

In  the  prevailing  key  of  his  Sonata,  the  key  of  B 
flat  minor,  one  of  the  most  sombre  in  all  the  realms  of 
tone,  Chopin's  Funeral  March  at  once  reveals  itself  as 
no  chapter  of  private  sorrows ;  the  mourning  of  a  mul- 
titude is  in  its  deep-voiced  chords  telling  the  burial  of 
a  people's  loss.  Fit  for  the  final  pageant  of  emperors 
and  kings,  yet  little  varied  as  the  monotone  of  some 
grave  discourse,  the  weighty  measures  move  majesti- 

S8 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

cally  and  slow  while  everywhere  bared  heads  are 
bending,  and  the  dull,  despondent  look  is  downward 
for  now  the  dust  shall  hide  yon  poor  reminder  of  a 
vanished  life.  Ah,  how  those  earth-bound  chords,  for 
less  than  two  brief  measures,  struggle  free  and  lift  us 
on  their  glorious,  upward  wings  !  Alas,  they  falter  ere 
yet  they  attain,  and  then,  in  feebler  soaring,  turn  and 
sink  exhausted  to  the  very  charnel  place  of  Death. 
Once  more  with  mighty  final  strength  the  massive 
chords  are  mounting  only  to  falter  and  attempt  and 
fall  again  even  to  the  dismal  housing  of  the  dead. 
Then,  suddenly  unto  that  comfortless  abode  a  song  of 
heaven  is  wafted  from  her  angel  choir.  At  once  com- 
plaining Doubt  is  dumb,  and  Sorrow  hath  her  respite, 
and  Hope  her  sweet  uplooking  to  the  rest  of  heroes 
from  their  finished  days.  Long  afterward,  when  acute 
grief  has  changed  to  pensive  musing,  that  song  in 
tones  of  unforgettable  beauty  steals  upon  the  silence  of 
the  soul ;  a  tender  message  from  the  never-dying  dead. 
But  whatever  of  balm  in  such  serene  outpouring,  the 
torn  heart  must  look  for  ease  to  Time  the  great  healer, 
and  so  the  deep  w^ounds  reopen,  the  insurmountable 
doubt  and  grief  again  are  undergone,  and  in  this  wise 
the  sublime  march,  so  masterfully  epitomizing  certain 
human  experiences,  draws  to  its  pathetic  close  and 
ends  on  the  sombre  chord  which  characterized  its 
beginning. 

59 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 
IV 

During  this  study  of  Frederic  Chopin,  the  musician, 
certain  incidents  in  his  career,  those  favorably  or  unfa- 
vorably affecting  his  artistic  development,  have  been 
touched  on.  Notable  among  them  was  his  friendship 
with  Liszt ;  but  we  have  now  to  record  the  effects  of 
another  coming  together,  that  of  Chopin  and  George 
Sand.  This  latter  was  not  the  marriage  of  two  minds 
musically  preeminent,  but,  in  fact,  the  result  of  the 
drawing  near,  until  under  one  sky,  of  two  related 
worlds:  that  of  the  musician,  and  that  of  the  poet,  for 
such,  in  fact,  was  the  world  of  the  imaginative  French 
novelist.  From  this  meeting  and  blending  of  abodes 
resulted  a  drama,  and,  for  Chopin,  a  final  tragedy ; 
therefore  a  word  in  regard  to  the  two  distinguished 
actors. 

Chopin's  bodily  appearance  was  marked  by  an  entire 
absence  of  the  robust ;  his  features  indicated  delicate 
and  refined  feeling ;  his  tastes  were  fastidious ;  his 
manner  smooth  and  faultless  with  the  last  polish. 
This  much  created  an  impression  as  of  a  feminine  per- 
sonality, but  the  real,  virile  man  was  there,  well-hidden 
beneath  his  mask.  "  George  Sand,"  as  that  nom  de 
plume  would  indicate,  claimed  for  herself  almost  every 
masculine  prerogative.  With  manly  daring  and  physi- 
cal vitality,  she  overleaped  convention  as  but  the  walls 

60 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

of  a  prison-pen  fit  only  for  the  shutting  in  of  Uttle 
minds.  And  yet,  before  some  noble  and  deep  nature, 
a  softest  fire  would  mount  to  those  dark  eyes  of  hers, 
and  voice  and  mien  revealed  the  ''  Eternal  Womanly," 
which  often  outlined  and  sometimes  portrayed  itself 
upon  her  most  tender,  soulful  pages.  From  trustwor- 
thy accounts  we  conclude  that  Chopin  was  at  first 
repelled,  not  by  any  physical  lack,  for  Madame  Dude- 
vant  had  just  and  ample  claims  to  comeliness,  but 
rather  from  his  inability  to  divine  at  once  the  basic 
affinity  which  afterwards  drew  and  held  him  despite 
external  dissimilarities.  Not  so  v/ith  the  great  novelist 
to  whose  feminine  insight  much  of  the  analytical,  mas- 
culine mind  was  added.  She  at  once  divined  Chopin, 
and  whatever  was  defective  in  him  the  glamour  of  sex 
made  good ;  so  she  desisted  not  until  she  had  made 
him  her  own. 

The  beauty  and  symmetry  and  fragrance  of  the 
flower  is  the  complete  expression  of  a  life  simple 
because  low  in  the  scale  of  evolution  ;  but  the  beauty 
and  symmetry  of  the  masculine  human  form,  together 
with  every  endowment  of  the  characteristic  masculine 
mind,  only  half  expresses  the  rounded  whole  of  the 
complex  human  soul,  itself  sexless  because  above  sex. 
What  is  true  of  man  is  equally  so  of  woman.  The  man 
and  the  woman  of  genius  each  recognizes  in  the  other 
the   riches  and  worth  of  that  hemisphere  of  the  soul 

6i 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

adequately  revealed  only  by  that  other.  This  percep- 
tion of  a  mutual  need  is  the  prompter  of  love  between 
men  and  women  high  in  the  scale  of  human  evolution ; 
it  is  in  fact  the  cause  of  love  even  in  the  most  unthink- 
ing ;  those  whom  only  the  wisdom  of  Nature  enlightens. 

Like  Beethoven,  who  sighed  for  his  "  Immortal 
Beloved,"  Chopin  himself  had  loved  and  more  than 
once.  That  half  of  his  being  which,  because  a  man, 
he  failed  to  realize  as  an  inward  belonging,  he  had 
projected  as  an  ideal  clothed  with  the  grace  and  beauty 
of  womankind.  That  ideal  had  looked  into  his  eyes 
with  tender  recognition,  or  a  glance  almost  of  scorn 
had  wholly  told  his  poor  unworth.  But,  favoring  or 
reproving,  that  ideal  had  vanished  utterly  and  forever, 
and  now  his  heart  indeed  was  lone  save  in  brief, 
exalted  moments  of  genius.  Then  the  soul  in  its 
entirety  would  assert  itself,  and  amidst  that  fullness  he 
needed  no  other  company. 

Chopin,  now  twenty-eight  years  of  age,  had  reached 
the  early  maturity  which  hastens  to  the  precocious 
genius  into  whose  brief  but  brilliant  years  are  crowded 
the  doings  of  an  ordinary  lifetime.  In  subject  matter, 
at  least,  he  had  from  the  first  shown  an  originality 
almost  unimpressed  by  any  great  contemporary  or 
predecessor.  Conscious  of  ability  to  stand  alone,  he 
shunned  rather  than  sought  the  friendship  of  renowned 
composers  and  virtuosi.     A  tone  poet  most  essential 

62 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

to  the  romantic  movement,  he  cared  not  for  the 
Romanticism  of  Schumann.  The  eccentricities  of 
Berlioz  repelled  him,  and,  strange  in  an  admirer  of 
Hummel  and  Field,  he  could  not  or  would  not  condone 
what  he  deemed  commonplace  in  the  bulk  of  Mendels- 
sohn's work.  As  for  Liszt,  to  whose  interpretation 
he  accorded  deserved  praise,  he  had  with  secret 
disdain  penetrated  to  the  somewhat  small  kernel  of 
original  and  worthy  ideas  in  that  author's  early  virtuoso 
pieces. 

From  this  much,  and  more  that  might  be  added,  it 
is  evident  that  Chopin's  glance  was  chiefly  introspec- 
tive. Moreover,  it  is  evident  that  his  inner  world  was 
not  that  of  other  musicians. 

What  then  was  the  influence  of  George  Sand  upon 
our  composer,  now  at  the  zenith  of  his  powers?  Evi- 
dently that  of  a  projected  ideal  the  image  of  the  half  of 
his  soul  life  which  Goethe  calls  the  Eternal  Feminine. 
In  the  searching  light  of  our  everyday  world,  the 
personality  of  George  Sand  betrays  many  defects. 
This  of  itself  forbade  a  union  like  that  of  the  Brown- 
ings; and  to  such  a  union  other  objections  existed. 
The  physical  ailments  of  Chopin,  which  even  in  youth 
had  menaced,  and  in  a  gradual  approach  had  now 
seized  upon  him,  were  never  wholly  to  loosen  their 
grasp,  so  the  chronic  invalid  became  at  times  an 
exacting  and  by  no  means  patient  sufferer.     On  the 

63 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

other  hand,  George  Sand  was  a  woman  of  wide  out- 
look and  varied  interests.  Certain  chimeras  in  the 
guise  of  political  and  social  reform  were  leading  the 
temperamental  novelist  far  afield ;  but  in  these  mat- 
ters the  composer  shared  not  her  enthusiasm,  neither 
would  he  be  indoctrinated  as  she  herself  had  been. 
Knowing  where  his  strength  lay,  he  remained  faithful 
to  his  muse,  his  lavish  endower.  While  Chopin  sought 
the  smiles  of  princesses,  and  the  applause  of  the  fash- 
ionable salon,  the  Sand  remained  aloof.  Conscious  of 
her  superb  mental  equipment,  she  no  doubt  believed 
that  the  brightest  of  all  that  gay  company  could  add 
not  a  single  thought  to  her  ever-overflowing  store. 
No  wonder  that  as  time  wore  on  our  musician  more 
and  more  failed  to  fulfill  the  requirements  of  her  ideal. 

The  affair  with  De  Musset  should  have  warned 
Chopin,  but  what  warning,  what  philosophy,  what 
aceticism,  could  offset  the  fascinations  of  one  who 
at  will  swayed  the  hearts  of  her  immense  public? 
Besides,  Chopin  was  not  a  philosopher  save  that 
unconscious  one  which  an  analysis  of  his  deepest  tone- 
poems  reveals.  Still  less  was  he  an  ascetic  this 
highly-developed  emotional  nature,  this  virile  yet  frail 
man  of  genius. 

Of  Chopin  it  must  be  admitted  that  he  remained 
true  to  his  attachment,  true  despite  indubitable 
proof  of  the  other's  infidelity;  true  even  till  the  shut- 

64 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

ting  of  the  door  wherewith  eventually  she  barred  her 
heart  forever  from  his  own  ;  true  even  then  he  remained, 
nursing  in  secret  the  sorrows  of  a  bruised  and  broken 
life,  while,  from  this  episode  in  her  own  career,  but  the 
finale  in  that  of  her  lover,  the  woman,  like  Faust  and 
Wilhelm  Meister,  emerged  into  other  and  varied 
experiences. 

But,  to  repeat  our  former  question,  what  was  the 
effect  of  George  Sand  on  the  ten  years  of  productive 
effort  which  measured  the  beginning  and  the  end  of 
this  affaire  du  coeur?  We  hold  that  effect  the  most 
important  of  everything  extraneous  on  the  body  of 
our  composer's  works  during  that  rich  decade.  Never- 
theless that  effect  is  not  local ;  the  finger  cannot  be 
placed  upon  it,  nor  is  it  determinable  as  a  fixed 
quantity.  Rather  it  is  nourishment  assimilated,  chemi- 
cally changed  to  blood  and  bloom  and  beauty  by  a 
process  whereof  genius  alone  has  the  secret. 

Of  the  work  of  these  memorable  years  it  may  well 
be  said  that,  beneath  their  various  dedications,  the 
name  of  George  Sand  was  written  in  the  warm  and 
ruddy  life  of  the  heart  of  Frederic  Chopin.  Had  the 
novelist  been  another  Clara  Schumann  rendering  for 
the  composer  those  great  fortissimos,  and  those  loud 
and  brilliant  passages  to  which  his  delicate  physique 
was  unequal,  or  even  had  Chopin  himself  been,  like 
Liszt,  a  man  of  literary  tastes  and  capabilities,   how 

6s 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

much  happier  the  outcome!  How  that  mutual  happi- 
ness, triumphing  over  the  depressing  power  of  a  dread 
disease  —  as  afterwards  in  the  case  of  Heinrich  Heine 
—  would  have  infused  a  more  luminous  color  into  the 
prevailing  sombreness  of  his  tone  poetry !  But,  thank- 
ful for  our  rich  heritage,  we  grieve  not  over  what 
might  have  been. 

V 

Because  of  the  superabundance  of  producers  in 
every  department  of  art  and  literature,  and  because 
the  actual  needs  of  the  world  are  small  in  proportion 
to  the  total  output,  a  sifting  results  whereby  is  pre- 
served only  that  most  typical  of  its.  kind.  Thus  of  a 
thousand  melodies  popular  in  their  hour,  one  is  added 
to  a  people's  treasury  of  song.  A  stirring,  national 
anthem,  or  a  perfect  poem  of  tender  feeling  or  conta- 
gious fiame,  may  alone  preserve  the  memory  of  a  prolific 
author.  Much  of  what  the  world  once  deemed  great 
in  art,  as  in  all  else,  has  gone  to  the  limbo  of  little 
things.  Of  the  surprising  bulk  of  poems  which  Byron 
at  thirty-six  left  behind  him,  most  of  the  "  Childe 
Harold,"  displaying  the  range  and  fire  of  his  yet 
undimmed  imagination,  and  the  freshness  and  ampli- 
tude of  his  characteristic,  eloquent  description,  will 
live;  but  "Lara"  and  "Cain"  and  such  must  mingle 
with  the  trodden  dust.     So  in   the  domain  of  music; 

66 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

many  old-time  authors  of  supposed  masterpieces  are 
superceded  by  others  of  like  calibre  and  claim.  Only 
of  him  who  in  his  department  creates  a  new  type,  or 
perfects  an  old  one,  can  anything  approaching  lon- 
gevity be  predicted. 

To  but  one  popular  poet  was  it  given  to  interpret 
in  a  hundred  lyrics  the  heart  of  his  peasant  Scotland. 
To  but  one  English  dramatist  to  create  for  our  sym- 
pathy Lear,  Cordelia,  Othello  and  Desdemona,  and  to 
evoke  from  his  fecund  brain  the  philosophical  musings 
of  Hamlet,  the  whimsical  humor  of  Falstaff,  the 
gossamer  beauties  of  "Midsummer  Night's  Dream," 
and  the  terrible  realism  of  Macbeth  and  Richard.  To 
but  one  epic  poet  was  it  given  to  breathe  a  quickening 
breath  into  the  pale  shades  of  those  mighty  dead, 
Hector,  Agamemnon,  Achilles,  and  many  an  otherwise 
forgotten  hero.  To  but  one  musician  was  it  given  to 
perfect  in  "The  Well-tempered  Clavichord"  the  great 
organ  Fugue,  to  but  one  master  of  his  art  to  show  the 
attainable  in  those  purely  classical  forms,  the  Symphony 
and  the  Sonata. 

But  what  in  a  summary  are  the  features  of  Chopin 
warranting  his  present  vogue,  and  assuring  his  future 
fame  ?  They  are  many,  and  each  is  an  unimpeachable 
witness  to  his  worth. 

Prior  to  his  day.  Bach  and  Beethoven  had  explored 
the  known  world  of  harmony.     They  knew  the  geogra- 

67 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

phy  of  its  vast  continents,  the  ch orography  of  its 
countries,  the  topography  of  its  mountains  and  valleys 
and  plains.  They  had  measured  its  waterways,  had 
sounded  its  seas,  had  sailed  by  its  limiting  shores ;  and 
then  Ludwig  Spohr,  suspecting  other  lands  beyond  the 
uncharted  west,  had  ventured  as  from  Gibraltar  even  to 
the  Azores,  or  the  Canaries,  the  Fortunate  Islands  of 
old.  Schumann  had  gone  even  farther,  but  not  to  the 
utmost  of  daring  for  this  was  the  deed  of  Chopin.  He, 
the  Columbus  of  composers,  gave  to  Harmony  a  new 
world.  He,  and  he  alone,  first  dreamed  and  then  beheld 
its  isles  of  Paradise,  tropic  and  enticing,  embowered  and 
restful,  fit  for  lone  and  pensive  musing  till  suddenly  the 
sun  is  darkened,  the  winds  make  wail,  and  a  dread  note 
of  thunder  foretells  the  bursting  storm.  Many  times  a 
voyager,  many  times  an  explorer,  he  brought  continu- 
ally, for  the  world's  wonder  and  delight,  the  fantastic, 
the  weird,  the  exquisite.  Ah !  his  was  no  haphazard 
sailing  on  the  ocean  of  sound ;  no  rudderless  drifting 
with  wind  and  tide !  Every  appliance  of  the  skilled 
navigator,  the  quadrant,  the  sextant,  the  compass,  were 
his  guides.  In  day  or  in  night  he  knew  the  altitude  of 
the  sun  or  else  of  the  polar  star.  He  had  calculated 
to  a  nicety  the  deflections  of  the  needle.  Though 
seemingly  lost  was  he  on  the  limitless  waves,  latitude 
and  longitude,  to  the  fraction  of  a  degree,  were  clear  to 
his  never-beclouded  mind.     He  it  was  who  opened  the 

68 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

way  for  all  future  discoverers  and,  inevitably,  for  rash 
and  turbulent  adventurers,  even  for  Richard  Strauss 
that  Cortes,  that  Pizarro  of  them  all. 

An  erudite  originality,  and  the  passionate  abandon  of 
the  author  of  "Norma,"  characterize  Chopin  the  melodist. 
In  the  new  world  by  him  discovered,  his  own  before- 
mentioned  world  of  the  ideal,  were  birds  of  rare  and 
differing  plume,  winged  with  the  delicate  greens  of 
half-grown  forest  leaves,  or  breasted  with  the  morn's 
red  kindling  ere  the  sun,  or  throated  v>'ith  the  orange 
of  the  fading  eve,  or  mottled  with  the  melancholy  grey 
which  tells  the  night.  And  some  there  were  a  purity  of 
white  more  spotless  than  the  farthest,  feathery  cloud ; 
and  some  whose  tufty  blue  was  borrowed  from  no  sky 
like  ours.  Of  these  creatures  of  the  composer's  realm, 
each  was  vocal  with  the  mood  whereof  his  beauty  was 
the  symbol.  Amidst  the  morning  wood,  one  lifted  to 
the  sun  a  brief  yet  briUiant  song  of  transport ;  another's 
notes  were  cadenced  from  beside  the  splash  of  shaded 
waterfalls  when  noon  was  burning  all  the  fields. 
Another  at  the  day's  down-sinking  breathed  a  tender 
plaint,  or  trembled  forth  a  melancholy,  sweet  farewell ; 
and  when  the  round  and  tropic  moon  had  touched  the 
listening  groves  to  silver,  a  rarer  than  the  nightingale 
would  warble  from  the  branching  palms. 

These  all  were  the  teachers  that  made  Chopin  a 
melodist ;  but  he  was  more  than  a  melodist,  more  than 

69 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

theharmonistwe  have  indicated;  he  was  a  great,  national 
tone-poet  whose  romantic  measures  characterized  his 
Poland  better  than  did  the  lines  of  her  chiefest  versi- 
fiers. The  individuality  of  Chopin  the  composer  was 
distinguishable  as  that  of  Beethoven  and  Wagner,  He 
was  above  the  mere  perfector  of  types.  His  Scherzos, 
his  Preludes,  his  Ballades,  his  Fantaisies  are  original 
conceptions.  On  the  rhythm  of  the  Polish  dance  he 
reared  his  dainty  Mazurkas.  Graceful  and  ethereal, 
they  yielded  like  the  slender  pine  to  every  swaying 
wind.  Framed  to  endure,  no  blast  could  overthrow 
them.  On  the  same  national  foundation  uprose  his 
Polonaises,  an  architecture  of  his  own  devising.  Fan- 
tastic but  not  grotesque,  uniquely  and  wholly  expres- 
sive, those  solid  structures  argued  immovability,  but  the 
tempest  proved  them  pliant  and  yet  enduringly  based 
as  the  deep-rooted  giants  of  the  wood. 

The  master  of  the  mechanical  difficulties  of  Bach 
and  Clementi,  must  encounter  others  quite  different  in 
the  Etudes  of  Chopin.  The  mind  of  such  a  one  follows 
not  swiftly  the  odd  and  rapid  chromatics  swarming 
through  certain  of  them.  His  muscles  tire  in  the 
midst  of  extended  and  unusual  chords  filling  whole 
pages.  His  fingers,  trained  to  anticipate  conventional 
harmonic  successions  in  the  passage  work,  are  here 
hindered  by  the  unusual  become  the  usual,  the  excep- 
tion become  the  universal  rule ;  and  yet  the  musical 

70 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

worth  of  these  intractable  measures,  whose  like  abounds 
everywhere  in  Chopin,  compels  the  pianist  of  our  day 
to  conquer  them. 

But,  more  important  than  the  mechanical,  there  is 
in  Chopin  a  mental  technique  peculiar  to  himself.  It 
informed  his  playing  with  an  ineffable  charm  which 
haunted  the  memory  of  pupils  and  listeners,  and  yet 
lives,  a  tradition  of  the  old  Paris  days. 

Unlike  Shakespeare  and  Beethoven,  the  Pole  was 
not  privileged  to  sound  the  harp  of  universal  life; 
therefore  the  universal  note  is  denied  him,  and  there- 
fore his  chief  interpreters  may  not  be  chosen  from  the 
gifted  of  every  nation.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  for 
the  music  of  the  vehement,  unreasoning  passion  which 
in  an  instant  transforms  the  shaft  of  love  to  the 
stiletto,  the  ItaUan  temperament  is  alone  adequate. 
It  is  acknowledged  that  for  the  rendition  of  the  semi- 
barbaric  native  rhythms,  the  wild,  lawless  onrushings 
and  the  tearful,  or  dreamy,  or  voluptuous  lingerings  of 
Hungarian  music,  the  blood  of  the  Magyars  must 
surge  from  the  heart  to  the  finger  tips. 

These  examples  prove  that  the  mental  technique  of 
our  composer,  a  matter  of  phrasing  and  pedaling  and 
accent,  and,  most  intangible  of  requirements,  the 
Chopin  rubato,  is  most  easily  and  completely  mastered 
by  the  Slav  genius.  Of  the  world's  goodly  com- 
pany of  virtuosi,  only  a  few  exponents  of  the  Polish 

71 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

musician  wholly  reveal  his  invaluable  contributions  to 
art. 

In  her  own  eyes  the  Amazonian  Sand  towered  a 
genius  in  every  way  superior  to  the  sickly  and  effeminate- 
mannered  Chopin,  but  she  attained  not  to  the  duty  of 
a  great  novelist.  No  permanent  types  have  sprung 
from  her  ambitious  and  busy  pen.  Those  fretting, 
fuming,  shadow-chasing  Byronic  heroes  and  heroines 
have  lived  their  mortal  days,  and  discriminating  Time 
denies  them  an  immortality  vouchsafed  the  works  of 
the  man  she  abandoned. 

Chopin's  career  as  composer  ends  with  the  Sand 
affair.  Of  what  followed  little  remains  to  be  told. 
An  unimportant  visit  to  London  and  Edinburgh  where 
broken  health  and  spirits  were  serious  obstacles  to 
brilliant  artistic  success.  A  few  friendships  formed,  a 
few  old  ones  cemented,  then  back  to  Paris  which  first 
he  entered  a  sojourner.  Yes,  back  to  Paris,  the  gay 
and  frivolous  and  cynical  Paris,  that  dances  to  the 
waiting  grave  and  laughs  and  scoffs  until  the  sad 
receiving  of  the  tomb. 

And  now  at  last  the  untimely  end.  He  w^ho  had 
blended  the  sheen  of  stars  with  the  rainbow  mist  of 
waterfalls  ;  he  who  had  swung  the  forging  hammer,  and 
rivalled  the  delicate,  meshy  gold  of  Vulcan ;  he  who  had 
prisoned  the  loud  thunder,  the  swift  lightning,  the 
angry,  the  plaintive,  the  whispering  wind ;  he  who  had 

72 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

outridden  the  ocean's  fury,  and  slept  on  the  polished 
breast  of  mountain  lakes;  he,  the  Endymion  of  melan- 
choly groves  beloved  of  Luna;  he,  the  portrayer  of 
battles  dread  with  the  doings  of  conquering  foes,  was 
himself  to  yield,  leaving  for  our  musical  heritage  the 
gloom  and  glory  of  his  works. 

Let  us  draw  near,  but  not  to  the  concert  hall,  and 
the  applauding  crowd  greeting  the  advent  of  the  young 
Polish  virtuoso.  Yes,  let  us  drav/  near,  but  not  to  the 
dazzling  salon  and  yonder  listening  group,  the  elite  of 
fashion  and  culture  and  fame,  gathered  around  the 
Erard.  Let  us  draw  nearer  than  these ;  nearer  than 
the  studio  of  the  composer,  and  the  wrapt  company  of 
the  inner  circle :  Sand  and  Hiller  and  Heine  and 
Meyerbeer  and  Delacroix  and  Liszt,  who  himself  has 
described  the  scene.  Ah,  let  us,  with  hushed  hearts 
and  noiseless  foot-fall,  approach  and  enter,  for  this  is 
the  place  of  parting  where  human  angels  neglect  no 
ministration  of  love  and  soothing  song  as  a  finished 
life  sinks,  like  the  master's  diminuendo,  to  waken  and 
swell  and  rush  and  thunder,  filled  with  the  vigor  of 
immortal  day. 

Far  from  the  charm  of  English  vales  and  meadows ; 
far  from  the  skylark  and  the  cloud  he  saw  and  loved 
above  their  freshening  green ;  afar  from  all  the  sweet 
allurements  of  his  native  isle  he  sleeps,  the  English 
Shelley,  where  the  blue  of  Italy  is  bending  o'er  the 

n 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

ruined  olden,  and  the  risen  new  whose  ancient  and 
eternal  name  is  Rome.  And  close  beside,  where 
Winter  spreads  the  flowers  of  northern  June,  is  lying 
Adonais,  poet  wept  in  tearful  poesy,  the  youthful 
Keats  whom  Beauty,  in  the  guise  of  Death,  drew  to 
her  own  enamoured  breast. 

Walled  from  the  covetous  human  waves,  safe  from 
the  encroaching  human  tide,  Pere  la  Chaise,  a  mass  of 
bloom  and  verdure,  lies  asleep  while  the  Parisian 
metropolis  roars  and  surges  on.  Of  all  the  multitudes 
here  gathered  to  the  silence,  one  at  least  is  alien  for 
never  a  branch  is  moaning,  never  a  breeze,  for  Polish 
liberty;  and  never  a  bird  is  inspired  by  such  sad, 
sweet  threnody;  and  never  a  strip  of  Polish  sky,  clear, 
or  cloud-bedarkened,  or  heavy  with  the  drops  of  sor- 
row, is  bending  o'er  chiseled  marble  of  a  tomb.  Amidst 
the  dead  of  every  high  and  noble  calling,  the  dead 
whose  deeds  enhance  the  fame  of  France,  that  alien's 
dust  is  in  the  jealous  keeping  of  a  nation  richer 
because  of  Poland  and  her  greatest  bard. 

Sixty  years  have  gone  since  the  October  day  when, 
within  the  walls  of  the  Madelaine,  the  master's  funeral 
measures  dirged  his  death.  Since  that  memorable  time 
many  pianoforte  composers,  men  of  talent  and  men  of 
genius,  have  arisen.  These,  by  their  indebtedness  to 
the  years  of  Chopin's  productivity,  prove  him  the  one 
epoch-making   composer   for    their    instrument    since 

74 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

Beethoven,  and  the  one  probably  without  a  successor 
in  kind. 

The  certainty  that  the  principal  Sonatas  of  Beetho- 
ven, and  the  Ballades  and  other  chief  works  of  Chopin, 
overtop  all  else  written  for  the  piano,  provokes  the 
question.  Which  of  these  composers  is  foremost  in  this 
realm  of  music  ?  The  question  at  once  lends  itself  to 
argument.  Evidently  Chopin  abounds  in  technical 
difficulties  unattempted  by  Beethoven,  and  these  diffi- 
culties are  a  proof  of  worth  because  in  fact  the  unusual 
but  necessary  conveyers  of  a  message  new  to  the 
musical  world.  It  must  be  conceded  that  Chopin's 
daring  chromaticisms,  transitions  and  modulations 
are  the  inevitable  expressions  of  a  genius  novel 
but  not  forced.  Then  again,  Chopin  wrote  for  the 
piano  not  as  he  found  it,  but  with  prophetic  knowl- 
edge of  its  future  possibilities ;  to  the  extent  of  all  this 
he  outrivals  Beethoven. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  harmonic  complexity 
is  of  itself  superior  to  broad  and  bold  simpHcity. 
This  truth  Handel  well  knew.  He,  the  master  of 
Fugue,  with  all  contrapuntal  devices  at  command,  is 
renowned  for  a  Doric  beauty  the  despair  of  the  Byzan- 
tine and  the  Rococo.  As  a  harmonist,  Beethoven  felt 
not  the  urge  of  the  unusual ;  the  immense  possibilities 
which  he  perceived  in  Bach  were  enough  for  his  grand 
and  stately  measures.     Taking  from  that  unexhausted 

75 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

mine,  he  cut  and  polished;  then,  brilliant  on  their 
every  facet,  he  strewed  the  gems  along  his  pages. 
Because  of  his  many-sided  excellence,  we  hold  Beetho- 
ven a  harmonist  superior  to  Chopin,  himself  a  delver 
in  the  Bachian  mine.  The  music  of  Chopin  is  recog- 
nizable almost  from  the  opening  bar,  but,  as  a  creator 
and  developer  of  characteristic  themes,  Beethoven  is 
unequalled.  While  Chopin  is  one  of  the  most  inspired 
melodists,  Beethoven  sings  himself  more  into  the  soul. 

Although  a  solitaire,  Beethoven  was  really  a  man  of 
widest,  deepest  sympathies.  Against  his  own  bosom 
he  felt  the  heart-beat  of  humanity,  and,  love-enlightened, 
he  divined  that  heart,  even  its  total  meaning.  The 
heaven-reaching  heights  of  joy,  and  the  black  profound 
of  woe,  and  every  intermediate,  throbbed  contagious 
into  his  own  breast.  Therefore  is  he  the  universal 
man,  interpreter  of  his  own  ideal  world  and  interpreter 
of  nations,  while,  on  his  human  side,  the  intense 
Chopin  is  the  epitome  of  Poland.  That  this  universal 
man  was  not  containable  within  the  possibilities  of  the 
pianoforte,  was  plainly  no  fault  of  his;  nevertheless, 
that  much  of  the  universal  which  informs  the  chief 
Sonatas  of  Beethoven,  entitles  them  to  supremacy 
over  the  greatest  of  the  other. 

As  the  second  of  pianoforte  composers,  what  giants 
Chopin  leaves  in  his  rear!  Haydn,  Mozart,  Schubert, 
Von    Weber,    Mendelssohn,    Schumann,    and   behind 

76 


FREDERIC  CHOPIN 

them  many  of  lesser  stature,  Hummel,  Clementi, 
Moscheles  and  such ;  and,  still  further  back,  the  great 
average,  the  ephemeral  multitude.  Of  all  their  push- 
ing of  pens,  little  will  remain  when,  on  some  distant 
to-morrow,  the  stirred  pulse  and  the  suffused  eye  prove 
the  tone-poems  of  the  Polish  musician  an  unfading 
charm,  an  undimmed  worth,  an  eternal  beauty,  in  the 
realms  of  art. 


77 


RICHARD  STRAUSS  AND  THE  ART  OF 
SOUND 


RICHARD  STRAUSS  AND  THE 
ART   OF  SOUND 


THE  years  now  with  us  are  prophetic  of  a  century 
notable  from  its  beginning ;  a  century  destined 
to  achieve  perhaps  beyond  our  boldest  imagining. 
Already  is  the  century  achieving,  as,  like  a  youthful 
but  formidable  being,  it  assaults  that  citadel  of  mystery 
wherein  Truth  must  relinquish,  one  by  one,  her  most 
valued  and  guarded  possessions. 

To  the  observant,  the  present  is  a  time  of  shaken 
foundations,  a  time  of  much  actual  overthrow,  and  even 
a  time  of  planning  that  broader  and  deeper  bases 
shall  well  sustain  the  super-imposed  new.  Amidst  an 
upheaval  of  things  social,  political,  scientific,  ethical 
and  aesthetic;  an  upheaval  world-wide,  and  necessarily 
sourced  in  the  sub-strata  of  the  world  of  causes ;  Art, 
for  instance,  is  unavoidably  disturbed  throughout  its 
various  provinces. 

Only  the  over-sanguine  will  assume  that  the  better 
must  needs  rise  from  upheaval  and  overthrow.  There- 
fore let  us  look  but  for  the  reasonable,  for  does  not 
many  a  desolated  province  of  this  material  world  belie 
the  theory  of  uninterrupted  advance  ? 

8i 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

Appearances  indicate  that  the  art  of  music  is  enter- 
ing upon  a  period  the  most  momentous  of  its  existence, 
a  period  of  transition  more  radical  than  when  it  was 
emerging  from  the  Greek  modes  ;  a  period  perhaps  of 
storm  and  stress,  of  morbid  and  eccentric  individual- 
ism ;  a  period  like  that  which  almost  overwhelmed 
literature  in  the  early  days  of  Goethe  and  Schiller ;  or, 
perhaps,  a  period  of  real  progress  ;  but,  in  either  event, 
a  period  from  which  it  will  come  forth  an  art  far  differ- 
ent from  that  of  Bach,  Beethoven,  Chopin  and  Wagner. 

Because  progressive,  the  human  mind  will  not  regard 
its  greatest  work  with  a  complacency  inimical  to  further 
effort.  Ever  it  fashions  and  re-fashions,  achieving 
yesterday,  failing  to-day,  and  then  more  than  retriev- 
ing on  some  fortunate  morrow.  Strange  doings  and 
sayings  are  rife  in  the  musical  world  of  the  present. 
Denying  the  validity  of  fixed  key,  Claude  Debussy 
begins  and  ends  his  tone  creations  anywhere  within 
the  limit  of  the  chromatic  scale.  Max  Reger  teaches 
the  intimate  fellowship  of  the  entire  twenty-four  keys, 
while  Richard  Strauss  has  well-nigh  outgrown  the 
twelve  semitones  of  our  time-honored  gamut  which 
must  be  enlarged  if  it  would  meet  the  needs  of  his 
successors.  It  is  the  opinion  of  many  that,  in  this 
event,  the  art  of  music  will  be  merged  in  what  we  shall 
here  call  the  art  of  sound.  Concerning  this  realistic 
art,  this  art  to  be,  let  us   explain  briefly  that,  whereas 

82 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

the  word  sound  signifies  all  that  the  ear  cognizes, 
whether  as  euphony,  cacophony  or  mere  noise,  yet,  for 
sound  to  attain  to  the  status  of  an  art,  art  must  endow 
with  definite  and  adequate  purpose  net  only  euphony, 
but  also  every  other  sound,  including  mere  noise. 

While  Strauss  with  almost  audacious  boldness  is 
leading  toward  the  enharmonic  possibilities  of  an  aug- 
mented scale,  the  more  conservative  but  no  less  ingen- 
ious Reger  is  looking  back  to  his  beloved  Bach,  and 
showing  what,  through  a  greatly  extended  key  relation- 
ship, that  master  might  have  accomplished  with  the 
good  old  semitones.  Eschewing  programme  music, 
and  all  else  demanding  literary  elucidation,  Reger  will, 
to  the  tone-poems  of  his  rival,  offset  a  fugue  or  a 
sonata  ultra  enough  for  any  save  the  disciples  of 
Strauss  and  Debussy. 

Like  Strauss,  Debussy  is  in  no  wise  to  be  ignored,  but 
always  and  wholly  to  be  reckoned  with  in  an  estimate 
of  advanced  methods.  Paradoxical  at  first  thought  is 
the  fact  that  Debussy,  whose  measures  abound  in 
unresolved  discords  of  ultra-modern  origin,  should 
found  his  music  not  uniformly  on  the  major  and  the  minor 
scales,  but,  by  preference,  largely  on  the  old  church 
modes.  This  reversion  to  the  mediaeval  indicates  a 
period  of  crisis  wherein  the  beam  fluctuates  between 
the  extremes  of  old  and  new  tonal  methods.  Dispens- 
ing with  the  size  and  blare  of  the  modern  orchestra, 

83 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

and  shunning,  as  if  an  obsession,  the  Wagnerian 
models,  Debussy  will  not  for  one  brief  moment  permit 
in  the  lyric  drama  such  outbursts  of  vocal  melody  as 
crown  the  climaxes  of  "Lohengrin,"  and  the  passionate 
love  scenes  of  "  Tannhauser."  And  this  for  the  specific 
reason  that  "  Melody  is  almost  anti-lyric,  and  power- 
less to  express  the  constant  change  of  emotional  life. 
Melody  is  suitable  only  for  the  song  which  confirms  a 
fixed  sentiment." 

While  Strauss  is  held  to  be  the  lineal  successor  of 
Liszt,  he  is  in  fact  a  compound  of  various  modern  tend- 
encies. In  him  we  find  the  philosophy  of  Nietzsche, 
the  impressionism  of  Manet,  and  the  realism  of  which 
De  Maupassant  and  Zola  and  Whitman  and  the  youth- 
ful Swinburne  were  exponents;  a  realism  which,  because 
it  over-emphasizes  the  erotic,  the  pathological,  and  the 
ugly,  misinterprets  man  and  nature,  and  so  betrays 
the  characteristics  of  decadent  art. 

What  would  have  been  the  attitude  of  Wagner  toward 
Strauss  may  be  inferred  from  his  caustic  attacks  on 
Berlioz  whose  music  he  called  foolish  and  eccentric ; 
and  yet,  as  a  producer  of  novel  effects  he  himself  was 
much  indebted  to  the  French  composer,  and,  in  turn, 
was  no  small  factor  in  the  formation  of  one  whom  Strauss' 
disciples  deem  the  greater  Richard.  Notwithstanding 
which,  we  affirm  that  Strauss  is  more  closely  related 
to  Liszt  whose  talents,  both  in  pianoforte  and  orches- 

84 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

tral  composition,  tended  to  virtuoso  display  more  than 
to  the  utterance  of  original  and  lofty  ideas. 

Prior  to  the  advent  of  Wagner,  the  musical  composer 
deemed  it  necessary  always  to  appeal  to  the  sense  of 
the  beautiful.  Whatever  his  theme,  his  music,  ever 
conforming  to  the  established  laws  of  harmony,  must 
not  be  repugnant  to  that  aesthetic  sense.  At  times  he 
no  doubt  overstepped  his  self-imposed  Hmit,  but,  some- 
how, the  ear  of  the  listener  has  accustomed  itself  to 
the  innovation,  and  with  the  result  that  not  a  few 
wholly  doubt  the  existence  of  a  line  of  cleavage  between 
the  ugly  and  the  beautiful.  However,  a  sane  philos- 
ophy will  demonstrate  that  beauty  and  ugliness  are  as 
unlike  as  are  good  and  evil. 

Neither  the  painter  nor  the  sculptor  restricts  himself 
to  pleasing  subjects ;  the  grotesque  and  the  horrible 
have  been  deemed  not  unworthy  the  brush  and  the  chisel 
of  artists  indubitably  great,  and  it  can  be  argued  that 
to  music  should  be  accorded  an  expression  free  and 
faithful  as  that  allowed  to  painting  and  the  plastic  arts. 
On  the  other  hand,  popular  opinion  has  ever  been, 
and  perhaps  ever  will  be,  that  what  is  actually  ugly  is 
not  music.  To  this  opinion  the  modern  reply  is  that 
the  word  music  carries  with  it  far  too  restricted  a 
meaning;  the  office  of  the  tonal  art,  like  that  of  all 
other  arts,  is  to  express  not  the  half  but  the  whole  of 
life  ;  in  fact,  the  universal  duality  in  nature  and  in  man. 

8s 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

With  deep  philosophic  and  artistic  insight,  Wagner 
elaborated  an  art  destined,  as  he  believed,  to  supercede 
Italian  Opera.  Despite  his  harsh  but  convincing 
strictures,  and  despite  the  theories  and  practice  of 
Debussy  who  holds  that  in  the  Music  Drama  the  vocal 
parts,  lest  they  hinder  the  dramatic  action,  should  be 
reduced  to  a  rythmic  chant  devoid  of  melody,  Italian 
Opera  survives ;  from  temporary  eclipse  it  is  emerging 
bright  as  before.  In  the  life  labors  of  the  great 
reformer,  we  are  beginning  to  see  simply  a  new  school 
supplementing  the  old.  We  are  beginning  to  see  that 
the  denouncer  of  Donizetti  and  Rossini  and  Verdi  and 
Bellini  and  the  rest,  was  himself  not  quite  faultless  in 
practice,  however  correct  in  theory.  Musicians  of 
eminence  now  admit  that  the  incongruities  of  Italian 
Opera  are  offset  by  the  over-long  and  the  slow-moving 
in  the  Wagnerian  Music  Drama.  Naturally  the  world 
refuses  to  forget  "Lucia"  and  "II  Barbiere '•  and 
"  Rigoletto "  and  "  Norma,"  and  in  fact  any  work 
whereinto  the  muse  of  Italy  has  poured  her  quenchless 
fire. 

Granting  that  the  faulty  and  inadequate  Greek 
modes  had  so  cramped  and  chilled  musical  expression 
that,  in  their  abandonment,  little  of  value  was  lost  to 
the  musicians  of  past  centuries,  what  shall  be  said  of 
our  modern  musical  heritage,  the  gift  of  the  last  two 
hundred  years,  and  which  the  universal  adoption  of  a 

86 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

new  and  enlarged  musical  scale  would  render  obsolete  ? 
Will  not  that  spirit  of  love  and  loyalty  which  defends 
the  cause  of  Italian  Opera,  make  determined  stand 
against  the  novel  system?  From  the  twelve  notes  of 
the  chromatic  scale  the  great  German  masters  have 
evoked  the  superlatively  beautiful.  Shaping  their 
imaginings  to  lofty  ideals,  they  have  in  fact  epitomized 
the  larger,  better  part  of  man  and  nature,  as  under- 
stood by  the  German  mind.  Admitting  this,  can  the 
cultured  musician  bring  himself  to  ignore  the  past  of 
German  art  ?  for  this  he  must  needs  do  under  an 
exclusively  modern  regime.  No !  a  thousand  times 
no !  That  for  music  a  different  scale  can  be  no  more 
than  supplimentary  is  indicated  by  the  history  of  all 
other  aesthetic  arts.  Their  every  worthy  type  endures  ; 
not  any  one  has  quite  eclipsed  another. 

The  two  leading  races,  once  peopling  the  southmost 
peninsulas  of  Europe,  were  extinct  centuries  ago,  but 
their  daily  tongues  survive,  dead  languages  never 
while  endures  the  world,  for  they  bring  to  all  enlight- 
ened peoples  the  period  and  climax  of  the  orator,  the 
meter  of  the  tragic  dramatist,  and  the  notes  of  the 
Homeric  and  the  Virgilian  muse,  fresh  and  unrivalled 
as  when  Greece  and  Italy  first  lent  ear. 

There  have  been  schools  of  architecture,  both  Pagan 
and  Christian,  schools  of  sculpture  from  Phidias 
onward ;  schools  of  modern  painting  since  the  mature 

87 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

work  of  Giotto ;  and  the  wise  ages,  far  from  selecting 
and  excluding,  have  preserved  them  all. 

To  men  of  creative  genius  were  granted  glimpses  of 
Truth ;  each  from  his  own  angle  beheld  the  ineffable 
vision.  Through  the  sundered  veils  of  illusion,  as 
through  the  storm's  momentary  rift,  the  permitted 
artist  beheld  his  own  ruling  star,  sometimes  a  royal 
sun,  sometimes  a  subordinite  planet,  but  always  one 
without  which  the  hierarchy  of  heaven  were  incomplete. 

That  neither  the  school  of  Wagner  nor  that  of 
Strauss  will  supersede  existing  national  schools  is 
assured  for  the  additional  reason  that  these  are  the 
outcome  of  national  ideals.  In  every  race  of  civiliza- 
tion the  man  of  creative  genius  proves  his  people  to  be 
possessed  of  ideals  of  art  peculiarly  their  own.  There 
results  for  example  the  Slavic,  the  Scandinavian,  the 
English,  the  German,  the  Spanish,  the  French,  the 
Italian  ideals,  and,  lofty  in  possibilities,  that  of  the 
amalgamating  race  destined  to  fill  this  ample  western 
land  of  ours. 

The  ideals  of  tonal  art !  Surely  the  Wagnerian  and 
the  Straussian  models  cannot  include  them  all !  Varied 
as  the  geography  of  the  globe,  as  the  configurations  of 
its  surface,  those  national  ideals  are  sombre  with  the 
solitude  of  barren  steppes ;  they  are  gloomy  with  the 
twilight  of  deep-indenting  fjords ;  they  are  rich  with 
the  ancient,  the  mediaeval,  the  modern,  of  a  land  of 

88 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

memories  gathered  since  the  coming  of  Arthur.  Oth- 
erwhere they  are  fraught  with  the  romance  of  Rhenish 
castles  where  Minnesingers  and  Meistersingers  have 
proved  the  magic  power  of  song  ;  or  else  they  bring  the 
southern  night  of  castinets  and  tripping  feet,  and  the 
moonlit  wonder  of  Moorish  Alhambra.  How  well  those 
ideals  have  embodied  the  gay  and  the  graceful,  also  the 
volatile  as  the  vintage  of  vine-clad  Champagne  !  And 
how  fitly  are  they  born  by  Adriatic  and  Mediterranean 
shores  where  the  ardent  day-beam  warms  the  heart  to 
love's  emotion  ;  and,  in  days  to  come,  shall  they  not 
suggest  the  amplitude  of  snowy  mountain  chains,  the 
undulating  sweep  of  prairies,  the  breezy  expanse  of 
vast  inland  seas,  and  the  eternal  dash  and  roar  of 
ocean  on  our  eastern  and  our  western  coasts  ? 

These,  and  countless  other  ideals  sourced  in  the 
world's  composite  life,  have  given  rise  to  a  necessarily 
varied  art  whose  inner  unity  must  remain  undiscovered 
till  mankind  becomes  one  great  famil)^  bound  by  a 
community  of  ideals  and  interests  in  the  millennial 
dawn  of  a  yet-un  risen  day. 

H 

The  belief  that  for  them  only  is  the  pure  and  high 
vision  of  Truth,  and  that  the  world  should  look  with 
their  eyes  and  abide  by  their  interpretation,  is  the  folly 
of    many  of   the   wisest   reformers.     Over-enthusiasm 

89 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

inflames  the  minds  of  such,  and  disturbs  their  sanity 
of  judgment.  The  reformer  in  art  is  usually  a  philoso- 
pher pledged  to  some  system  into  which,  as  into  a 
mould,  he  pours  at  fluid  heat  his  artistic  imaginings. 
Because  no  system  of  philosophy  yet  elaborated  finds 
general  acceptance,  or  because,  as  Schopenhauer  inti- 
mates, one  discovers  in  any  philosophy  only  what  his 
capacity  permits,  our  reformer  will  appeal  chiefly  to 
those  whose  minds  are  akin  to  his  own. 

For  the  comprehension  of  Beethoven  and  his  great 
predecessors,  little  more  than  a  trained  ear  is  necessary ; 
but,  for  the  comprehension  of  our  latest  composers, 
one  must  habituate  himself  to  abstruse  metaphysical 
thinking.  To  endorse  Wagner,  both  wholly  and  under- 
standingly,  one  should  assent  to  Schopenhauer's  theory 
of  music.  To  endorse  in  like  manner  the  attitude  of 
Strauss,  one  should  assent  to  the  "  Super  Man "  of 
Nietzsche,  and  his  crowning  qualities  "  evolved  good 
and  evolved  evil." 

If,  as  Whitman  says,  perfect  sanity  characterizes  the 
master  among  philosophers,  how  can  more  than  a  cult 
accept  that  topsy-turvy  of  ethical  values,  that  quack 
mixture  of  Scientific  Materialism  and  Comtism  run 
mad,  the  system  of  Nietzsche  ?  It  is  probably  that  but 
for  his  "  Beyond  Good  and  Evil,"  Strauss,  the  foremost 
exponent  of  musical  ultraism,  would  have  hesitated  at 
more  than  half-way  measures. 

90 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

In  the  morning,  ere  he  attempted  creative  work, 
Wagner  was  wont  to  say,  "  If  we  could  keep  our  hearts 
pure  this  day,  untainted  and  untempted  by  the  false 
values  of  the  world,  what  visions  of  Infinity  itself  were 
possible  to  us  !  " 

Surely  the  heart,  indispensable  to  the  creation  of  a 
masterpiece  of  art,  cannot  be  stimulated  by  a  philoso- 
phy brutal  because  without  pity ;  a  philosophy  shallow 
because  ignorant  of  the  essential  nature  and  ultimate 
end  of  what  it  deems  mere  weakness ;  a  philosophy 
which  would  crush  that  symbol  of  weakness,  the  fall- 
ing sparrow,  and  quench  all  love  for  the  neighbor  if 
in  him  appear  no  promise  of  "  Super  Man."  Now  who 
is  this  "  Super  Man,"  this  ideal  of  Nietzsche  and  his 
tonal  interpreter  ?  Is  he  not  a  being  fashioned  much 
after  the  model  of  what  the  race  no  more  desires,  to 
wit,  the  outworn  gods  of  Greece  and  Rome?  Is  he  not 
an  ideal  compounded  of  mutually  destructive  qualities  ? 

Because  of  the  serious  shortcomings  we  have  indi- 
cated, and  because  of  others  which  will  be  pointed  out, 
the  art  of  Strauss  may  never  reach  the  highest  levels ; 
his  chief  office  as  composer,  like  that  of  Whitman  as 
poet,  may  be  to  explore  a  domain  wherein  the  superla- 
tive genius  of  the  future  is  to  expand  his  ample  powers. 
That  genius,  and  in  our  opinion  he  only,  can  reveal 
the  legitimate  possibilities  of  sound.  In  his  tonal  cre- 
ations the  cacophonious,  as  well  as   the   euphonious, 

91 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

must  be  employed  in  such  way  that  every  mood  of 
man  and  every  shade  of  human  feeling  shall  be  faith- 
fully portrayed,  and  the  world  itself  epitomized.  His 
must  be  a  sane  equipoise,  an  unfailing  sense  of  fitness, 
the  consummate  ability  to  adjust  to  a  nicety,  so  that 
always  the  end  justifies  the  means.  Already  his  pred- 
ecessors in  the  great  acknowledged  schools  have 
developed  the  art  of  euphony.  It  will  be  his  even 
more  difficult  and  exacting  task  to  develop  the  art  of 
cacophony,  and  fuse  the  two  in  such  way  that  they 
over-picture  not  the  totality  of  man  and  nature. 

Notwithstanding  Wagner's  belief  that  instrumental 
music  could  not  further  develop  unless  fused  vvdth  the 
sister  arts  of  poetry,  painting  and  dramatic  action,  the 
modern  outlook  discovers  in  the  art  of  sound  almost 
limitless  possibilities  as  yet  unrealized;  but,  judging 
from  the  past,  the  stupendous  tonal  edifice  created  by 
the  coming  master  will  not  overshadow  the  erections 
of  composers  from  Bach  to  Wagner. 

Still  the  divine  Mozart  will  turn  us  to  the  never-to- 
be  depised  beauty  of  form  chaste  and  classic.  Still 
Beethoven's  temple  of  music  will  reveal  that  form's 
complete  and  glorious  development  and  crowning. 
Still  at  heaven's  very  g^te  will  Schubert,  spontaneous 
and  impassional  lark,  outpour  the  melody  he  learned 
beneath  that  temple's  overhanging  roof,  or  else  in  the 
sacred  limits  of  its  inmost  court. 


92 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

Always  we  shall  have  with  us  those  who  in  the  name 
of  progress  turn  the  back  on  whatever  is  behind.  Ignor- 
ing Aristotle's  profound  dictum  that  the  real  test  of  art 
is  not  originality,  but  its  truth  to  the  universal,  these 
no  doubt  will  ridicule  as  immature  attempts,  necessary 
to  the  adolescence  of  art,  all  that  is  greatest  in  German 
and  Italian  music.  In  addition  to  these  we  shall  have 
that  class  of  temperamental  individuals  who,  from  the 
extravagant  and  bizarre,  derive  that  thrill  of  rapture 
which  they  mistake  for  appreciation  :  however,  these 
fickle  followers  of  fads  and  fashions  cannot  be  reck- 
oned among  the  adherents  of  legitimate  art.  Now  as 
to  the  public,  the  great  overwhelming  body  of  the  peo- 
ple ;  can  they  be  educated  to  enjoy  the  new  art  of 
sound  ?  Will  they  not  refuse,  aye,  obstinately  refuse 
to  appreciate  cacophony  however  judiciously  employed? 
A  difficult  question  this  unless  one  remembers  that, 
as  the  race  advances,  the  foremost,  coming  into  new 
vistas  of  Truth,  bequeath  to  those  next  in  line, 
and  so  on  to  the  very  rear,  their  own  rare  and  high 
discovery. 

In  the  comprehensive  art  of  sound,  the  euphonious 
epitomizes  the  major,  better  half  of  man  and  nature. 
From  this  it  appears  that  the  cacophonious  must  epito- 
mize the  minor,  baser  half.  Why,  heretofore,  was  this 
half  well-nigh  denied  tonal  utterance  ?  Was  it  not 
largely  from  the  old  and  inadequate  theological  con- 

93 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

ception  which  made  the  existence  of  evil  an  abortion 
of  the  Divine  plan  ? 

Conceding  the  answer  implied,  and  granting  that  the 
attitude  of  the  time  is  one  of  invitation,  let  us  con- 
sider certain  factors  necessary  to  the  realization  of  the 
art  of  sound. 

Orchestral  music  and  orchestral  accompaniment,  as 
understood  by  Bach  and  Handel,  betray  a  paucity  of 
resource  and  a  lack  of  color  then  inevitable.  Since  that 
era  of  small  beginnings,  and  in  late  years  especially, 
orchestral  instruments  both  numerous  and  valuable 
have  been  invented,  and  the  capacity  of  brass  and 
wood-wind  much  enlarged  and  their  quality  greatly 
improved.  Desirous  of  utilizing  to  the  utmost  all 
additions  and  improvements,  orchestral  composers 
sought  effects  the  most  novel  both  in  solo  and  in  sym- 
phony. As  result  the  orchestra  grew  from  infantile  to 
gigantic  proportions  and  capabilities.  Thus  was  pro- 
duced a  full,  flexible  and  characteristic  means  of 
expression,  one  peculiarly  suited  to  the  speculating 
and  philosophizing  musician  who,  already  due  and  now 
appearing,  added  his  contributions  to  those  productive 
of  a  rounded  art. 

In  examining  the  factors  which  make  for  Strauss 
and  his  works,  we  shall  find  that  his  native  originality 
could  never  have  raised  him  to  what  he  is,  and  that 
the  art  of  sound  would  still  be  an  undiscovered  one, 

94 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

had  not  Chopin  already  exemplified,  most  eloquently, 
the  flexibility  of  the  laws  of  chromatic  progression, 
and  had  not  Wagner,  that  great  emancipator,  stricken 
from  musical  form  the  cramping  bonds  of  a  narrow 
convention. 

If,  as  we  contend,  the  minor  half  of  dual  man  and 
nature  has  legitimate  place  in  all  art,  then  let  the 
musician  beware  lest,  as  final  impression,  he  make  evil 
seductive,  and  so  identify  himself  with  decadence  as 
have  those  who  denounce  in  every  form  of  art  any 
purpose  consciously  moral ;  those  in  fact  who  announce 
as  their  dictum,  "Art  for  art's  sake."  When  for  spe- 
cific ends  the  musician  weaves  around  evil  a  flowery 
spell,  he  somehow  should  make  us  feel  that  death  and 
corruption  lurk  in  every  petal  of  those  all-too-enticing 
blooms. 

Moreover,  when  by  means  of  cacophony  he  lays 
bare  the  true  nature  of  evil,  he  should  avoid  an  excess 
which  would  identify  him  with  the  moral  pervert  whose 
delight  is  in  the  abnormal.  Let  him  understand  that 
in  this  world's  great  school  where,  only  amidst  the  lure 
of  opposites,  character  can  be  formed  and  wisdom 
gained,  the  true  office  of  evil  and  the  secret  of  its  per- 
mission is  that  eventually  its  inner  hideousness  will 
turn  from  itself,  forever,  those  who,  through  ignorance 
of  the  essential  nature  of  evil,  have  yielded  to  its  man- 
ifold seductions. 

95 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

Of  all  arts,  music  is  accredited  to  be  the  highest  and 
purest.  The  supreme  art  of  the  beautiful,  it  rests  on 
a  mathematical  basis.  Its  notes  and  intervals  and 
chords  progress  in  compliance  with  defined,  or  at  least 
definable  laws  corresponding  to  the  great  laws  which, 
moving  with  mathematical  precision,  brought  order 
from  chaos  and  so  created  the  world.  Concerning  the 
art  of  sound,  this  problem  confronts  us ;  what  are  the 
laws  if  any  which  govern  the  ugly  ?  Or,  to  put  it 
differently,  to  what  extent  does  the  ugliness  of  evil 
correspond  to  chaotic  conditions  ? 

If  what  the  composer  would  depict  is  not  governed 
by  mathematical  law,  then  is  he  warranted  in  the  use 
of  unresolved  and  unresolvable  dissonances.  Judged 
by  this  rule,  Debussy  has  perhaps  so  transgressed  that 
a  wiser  generation  will  pronounce  his  efforts  to  be  a 
passing  phase  of  sestheticism.  But  the  difficulty  of 
determining  just  what  is,  or  is  not  governed  by  mathe- 
matical law,  must  lead  to  a  deal  of  error  ere  we  attain 
the  true  art  of  sound. 

To  illustrate  the  vast  unlikeness  of  method  in  the 
descriptive  instrumental  works  of  the  classical  and  those 
of  the  ultra-modern  school,  two  examples  will  suffice. 
The  representation  of  Chaos  in  Haydn's  "  Creation," 
gave  to  the  composer  full  opportunity  for  every  liberty 
of  harmony  and  form  tolerated  in  his  time.  Now, 
while  a  rather  frequent  use  of  the  diminished  seventh 

96 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

chord  lends  to  this  composition  somewhat  of  needed 
vagueness,  still  there  are  no  modulations  to  distant 
keys,  no  abrupt  transitions,  no  unresolved  or  unresolv- 
able  discords,  no  consecutive  perfect  fifths,  and,  in 
fact,  there  is  nothing  in  the  chord  progression  which 
the  critic  of  to-day  would  deem  daring  or  even  unusual 
for,  always  and  wholly,  the  harmonic  scheme  conforms 
to  conventional  rules.  Here  and  there  is  somewhat 
of  concession  to  established  musical  form,  for,  in  this 
picture  of  Chaos,  the  employment  of  anything  radical 
either  in  form  or  harmony,  would  have  provoked  cen- 
sure the  very  harshest  and  even  have  proved  the  author 
guilty  of  the  unpardonable  sin  of  producing  what  could 
never  be  called  music. 

With  this  attempted  realism  of  Haydn,  compare  now 
that  portion  of  "  Don  Quixote  "  wherein  Strauss  delin- 
eates the  gradual  and  complete  disordering  of  the  mind 
of  Cervantes'  hero.  Wholly  sure  of  his  novel  method, 
one,  by  the  way,  peculiarly  adapted  to  the  subject, 
Strauss  avails  himself  of  every  conceivable  liberty 
of  tone  and  form.  Euphony  and  cacophony  mix  in 
an  astounding  realism,  while  the  rational  sequence 
of  sanctioned  form  gives  way  to  the  illogical  and 
wholly  fantastic,  in  fact  the  chaos  of  dethroned 
reason. 


97 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 


III 


The  subject  of  long  experiment.  Music,  as  we  know 
it,  at  length  emerged  from  the  centuries,  virtually  a 
modern  art.  The  fate  of  its  founders  and  their  follow- 
ers for  long  after,  is  that  the  names  of  these  are  well- 
nigh  forgotten,  and  their  works  are  heard  no  more. 
Because  of  them  the  later  comers  have  survived  rich 
through  inheritance,  but  perhaps  no  richer  by  nature. 

Again  has  music  reached  the  experimental  stage. 
Sweeping  upward  in  mighty  spiral,  and  so  conforming 
to  creation's  universal  trend,  now,  at  a  point  of  depar- 
ture overlooking  the  old,  it  finds  inadequate  that  result 
of  compromise,  the  diatonic  scale.  It  faces  the  problem 
of  tonality  and  those  modern  questions  which  a  higher, 
wider  outlook  brings  to  view. 

In  estimating  the  value  and  longevity  of  Strauss' 
art,  let  us  remember  that  the  ancient  experimenters  in 
music  evolved  no  definite  types  as  Nature  in  her 
domain  has  done.  Half-formed,  their  pale  and  blood- 
less attempts  have  perished  from  sheer  lack  of  vitality. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  tone-dramas  of  our  most  modern 
virtuoso  are  anything  but  anaemic ;  an  all-too-turbulent 
flood  rushes  through  their  every  vein.  So  much  is 
Strauss  a  product  of  his  time  that  the  characteristics 
now  placing  him  in  the  forefront  would  have  little 
availed  him  in  an  age  believing  with  Schumann  that 

98 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

Harmony  is  king  and  Melody  queen  in  the  composer's 
realm. 

Were  Strauss  endowed  with  a  lyric  gift  comparable 
to  that  of  Schubert,  probably  he  would  be  impelled  to 
exercise  that  gift  almost  within  the  compass  of  conven- 
tion. Were  he,  like  Handel,  able  to  accomplish  the 
majestic  and  the  magical  without  recourse  to  chromatic 
progression,  the  bizarre  would  lead  him  less  far  afield. 
Again,  were  he  capable  of  a  kingdom  like  that  wherein 
Beethoven,  reigning  by  divine  right,  reigned  supreme, 
surely  he  would  not  have  sought  the  seemingly  unfruit- 
ful wastes,  the  perhaps  barren  Saharas  of  sound. 
Deficient  in  the  crowning  qualities  of  these  masters, 
but  not  deficient  in  genius,  he  imagined,  and  actually 
undertook  with  ardor,  that  of  which  they  could  never 
have  dreamed. 

Having  accredited  Strauss  with  genius,  though  of  a 
peculiar  sort,  we  are  led,  for  the  better  understanding 
of  this  master,  to  ask,  what  is  genius  ?  To  this  query 
the  wisdom  of  all  ages  has  given  various  answers. 
According  to  Plato,  a  genius  is  one  whose  vision  of 
Beauty,  Truth,  and  Good,  existing  in  the  Divine  Mind, 
is  clearer  than  that  of  other  men.  Therefore  genius 
does  not  actually  originate.  Its  office  is  to  translate, 
to  reproduce  the  great  originals,  the  eternal  archetypes 
of  the  super-mundane  world.  Because  of  his  high 
vision  the    artist  reproduces  Beauty,  the  philosopher 

99 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

Truth,  while  the  saint,  enamoured  of  Good,  both 
teaches  and  practices  it. 

Granting  this,  we  are  at  once  led  to  ask,  why  the 
penetrating  vision  of  genius  ?  To  this  query  a  brief 
answer  is  that  because  the  possibilities  either  latent  or 
unfolding  in  man  are  immeasurable  as  the  universe 
itself,  therefore  that  which  men  are  pleased  to  call 
genius  is  but  the  foreshowing  of  what  the  race  as  a 
whole  shall  attain  to,  but,  in  the  present  stage  of  human 
progress,  genius  is  in  fact  a  rare  exception  to  Nature's 
slow  and  thorough  methods.  Nevertheless,  the  price 
of  its  defiance  of  the  universal  law  must  be  paid  by 
genius,  and  that  price  is  unsymmetrical  development. 

Because  of  unsymmetrical  development,  genius  may 
at  times  produce  what,  to  the  average  normal  being^ 
would  seem  the  work  of  a  degenerate  mind ;  but  in 
estimating  Strauss  it  should  be  considered  that  the 
tonal  interpreter  of  Don  Quixote  can  often  be  sanely 
logical,  and  even  wholly  conventional. 

The  genius  of  Strauss,  like  that  of  Whitman,  is 
essentially  the  genius  of  the  explorer.  Each  of  these 
burned  to  reach  the  limits  of  his  art  and  plant  victori- 
ous feet  upon  the  pole.  As  in  the  material  world,  so 
here,  such  daring  spirits  are  necessary  if  we  would 
know  the  geography  of  the  world  of  tone.  To  our  old 
musical  possessions,  Strauss  has  joined  a  vast  and  as 
yet  vague  territory  much  of  which,  while  of  little  pres- 

lOO 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

ent  value,  may  yet  develop  unexpected  and  perhaps 
indispensable  uses. 

It  argues  against  the  real  sanity  of  Strauss'  art  as  a 
whole,  that,  for  the  exercise  of  his  gifts,  he  chooses 
Oscar  Wilde's  version  of  the  story  of  Salome,  a  version 
in  which  the  central  theme  is  a  monstrous  and  revolting 
passion  unmatchable  in  actual  life,  and  even  unthink- 
able except  by  the  sexual  pervert.  Also,  it  is  ominous 
that  Strauss  undertakes  the  tonal  treatment  of  the 
brilliantly  written  but  illogical  work,  "Thus  spake 
Zarathustra ; "  a  work  wherein  is  discovered  the  phi- 
losopher Neitzsche's  ideal,  the  earth-shaping,  earth- 
dominating  man  to  be,  a  proud,  unconcerned,  scornful, 
violent,  and  fear-inspiring  personage  beloved  of  Wis- 
dom the  goddess  woman  that  loves  the  warrior  only. 
In  this  "  Super  Man  "  evolved  evil  and  evolved  good 
are  necessary.  Free  from  gods,  and  every  adoration 
save  that  of  self,  he  rises  over  unnumbered  small 
folk  and  timorous  weaklings,  and  that  protection  art- 
fully invented  for  them  by  the  Christian  Church, 
"  Slave  Morality  ;  "  and  so  he  attains  his  goal,  "  Master 
Morality,"  that  which,  to  all  but  the  mind  of  the  moral 
pervert,  is  the  morality  of  the  tyrant  whose  will  none 
dares  gainsay. 

We  have  already  contended  that  the  wide  departure 
of  Strauss  was  natural  and  necessary  to  a  genius  lack- 
ing in  certain  gifts  indispensable  to  the  older  schools ; 

lOI 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

also  we  have  accredited  him  with  being  a  compound  of 
various  tendencies  essentially  modern.  It  may  with 
assurance  be  affirmed  that  the  art  of  sound  could  have 
originated  only  in  a  time  like  our  own,  a  time  whose 
methods  are  well  illustrated  by  the  attitude  of  certain 
of  our  modern  novelists. 

Having  proved  to  themselves  and  their  following  the 
correctness  of  the  new  methods,  and  the  falsity  of  the 
old,  these  have  largely  abandoned  plot  and  incident, 
and  devoted  their  talents  to  ps3'cholog)^  Now  while 
it  is  incontestable  that  Walter  Scott  could  by  no  means 
have  brought  to  the  trivial  and  the  commonplace  the 
analytical  mind  of  Henry  James,  still  we  venture  that 
the  world  has  lost  nothing  because  of  this.  The  poor 
plodding  world  looks  downward ;  so  its  eyes  must 
again  and  again  be  diverted  from  the  trivial  and  the 
commonplace,  and  lifted  toward  an  ideal  which,  even 
if  overdrawn,  is  immeasurably  better  than  none. 

While  preferring  to  grope  in  the  dark  regions  of  the 
abnormal,  the  art  of  Strauss,  the  art  of  the  modern 
psychologist  has,  as  one  might  expect,  often  treated 
the  trivial  and  the  commonplace.  Besides  it  is  evi- 
dent that  neither  in  Salome  nor  in  "  Thus  spake  Zara- 
thustra  "  has  it  given  to  the  world  a  normal  ideal. 
With  the  great  masters  of  the  past  it  was  always  an 
ideal,  the  noblest  within  the  range  of  their  inspired 
vision.     To    Haydn    it   was    the  terrestrial   Eden  yet 

i  102 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

undarkened  by  the  Fall.  To  Handel  it  was  the  Greater 
Adam,  and  His  coming  long  foretold.  To  Bach  it  was 
Gethsemane,  and  its  immortal,  crowning  passion  of 
sorrow.  To  Mendelssohn  it  was  the  prophet  and  the 
saint  those  rich  flowerings  of  his  ancient  race.  To 
Wagner  it  was  the  eternal  womanly  prompting  to  no- 
blest deeds  of  devotion  and  self-sacrifice. 

With  men  like  these,  the  presentation  of  high  moral 
ideals  resulted  from  intuitive  knowledge  that  the  per- 
petuity of  mankind,  as  something  nobler  than  the 
brute  kingdom,  depends  upon  acceptance  of  these 
ideals,  and  therefore  any  so-called  masterpiece  which 
brings  about  confusion  of  ideals,  would  render  the  real 
purpose  of  art  abortive. 

The  music  of  such  masters  as  Haydn  and  Mozart 
voices  the  pure  emotions  spontaneous  in  the  breast  of 
man.  God-given  emotions,  never  to  be  quenched,  they 
will  burst  into  utterance  while  throbs  the  human  heart. 
The  evolution  of  music,  as  of  all  art,  accords  with  the 
evolution  of  man  from  a  creature  of  primal  impulses  to 
one  of  a  thousand  involved  emotions  and  interests. 
The  latest  methods  of  Strauss  are  fraught  with  peculiar 
peril  to  his  art,  as  an  epitome  of  life,  in  that  a  well- 
nigh  exclusive  use  of  obscure  and  chromatic  harmonies 
is  restricting  that  art  to  an  expression  of  complex 
emotions  only.  Now,  while  through  no  composer 
however  gifted  can  music  revert  to  the  prevailing  sim- 

103 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

plicity  of  Handel,  still,  whatever  its  evolution,  it  must 
as  an  epitome  of  life,  have  moments  of  native  and  sim- 
ple emotion.  Therefore  it  was  a  sane  and  saving 
reaction  which  turned  the  efforts  of  Strauss  from  the 
abnormal  to  the  smaller,  more  subdued  models  of  the 
song  writer,  and  also  to  that  wholesome  and  human 
idyl,  the  Enoch  Arden  of  Tennyson. 

As  an  orchestral  writer,  Strauss  has  gathered  to 
himself  the  technical  knowledge  of  Berlioz,  Liszt,  and 
Wagner.  Having  enlarged  his  resources  through  orig- 
inal discovery,  he  dazzles  by  display  of  a  virtuosity 
wholly  unprecedented.  Technically  he  is  fully  equipped 
for  exploration  ;  and  thus  he  is  pushing  on  into  that 
new  hemisphere  the  realm  of  sound. 

In  our  exposition  we  have  endeavored  to  point  out 
certain  tendencies  in  the  work  of  Strauss,  tendencies 
which  endanger  realism  in  every  art  whatsoever,  ten- 
dencies which  we  believe  are  turning  Strauss  from  full 
and  sane  achievement,  and  so  from  his  prospective 
goal  the  art  of  sound.  That  such  an  art  is  legiti- 
mate and  actually  within  sight  we  have  endeavored  to 
show,  as  also  the  certainty  that,  once  our  possession, 
it  will  supplement  and  not  supercede  its  predecessors. 
Failing  to  find  in  Strauss  the  lofty  personage  his  wor- 
shippers deem  him  to  be,  we  nevertheless  have  accred- 
ited him  with  real  though  peculiar  genius,  and  this  is 
but  justice  due.     Living  in  a  transition  period  largely 

104 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

of  his  own  bringing  about,  he  has  produced  both  the 
unquestioned  and  the  problematical.  But  that  prob- 
lematical can  be  ignored  or  forgotten  no  more  than  the 
problematical  of  Whitman.  At  very  least,  it  will  sur- 
vive as  a  curiosity  of  tonal  art. 

In  his  theoretical  writings  on  the  opera  and  the  drama, 
Wagner  likens  music  to  the  soulless  nymph,  a  real 
woman  only  through  the  love  of  some  man.  Poetry, 
to  Wagner,  is  that  masculine  endowing  music  with  an 
immortal  part.  This  novel  finding  of  the  poet-musi- 
cian is  but  the  outcome  of  a  theory  ;  an  outcome  which 
the  patent  facts  easily  and  wholly  refute.  Instrumental 
music  when  treated  by  a  virile  master,  like  Wagner 
himself,  can  be  masculine  enough,  while,  in  the  hands 
of  a  versifier  gifted  chiefly  with  grace  and  smoothness, 
Poetry,  the  masculine  art  so  called,  becomes  weakly 
feminine,  or  even  a  characterless  thing  not  attaining  to 
sex. 

Wagner's  theories  are  founded  on  a  philosophy 
essentially  of  Eastern  origin,  but,  had  he  looked  deeper, 
our  speculator  would  have  discovered  that  Eastern 
philosophy  considers  sex  to  be  but  an  outward  mani- 
festation incident  to  the  present  stage  of  world  evolu- 
tion. The  human  soul,  and  also  the  soul  of  every  art, 
contains  within  itself  the  potentiality  of  both  male  and 
female.  Sex  in  the  physical  world  is  lack  of  equilib- 
rium,   the    temporary   preponderance    in    the  soul   of 

105 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

specific  male  or  female  characteristics  outwardly  ex- 
hibited, but,  in  the  mental  world,  the  offspring  of 
highest  genius  would  attain  an  equilibrium  superior  to 
distinction  of  sex. 

In  art,  as  in  man  its  author,  the  masculine, 
untempered  by  the  feminine,  becomes  not  wisely 
masterful,  but  harsh  and  brutal ;  hence  the  peril  of 
Strauss.  The  feminine,  untempered  by  the  mascu- 
line, becomes  not  intuitive,  but  weakly  capricious  and 
wholly  illogical  ;  hence  the  peril  of  Debussy.  The 
great  authors,  whichever  their  sex,  have  produced 
works  wherein  specific  male  and  female  characteristics 
modify  one  another. 

This  view  of  sex  in  art  makes  for  the  validity  of 
instrumental  music  as  such,  and  reenforces  the  posi- 
tion of  Strauss  when,  in  his  wholly  instrumental  tone 
poems,  he  would  delineate  every  phase  of  life,  and 
even  certain  phases  of  philosophic  thought  as  Wagner, 
despite  theory,  has  done  in  his  "  Faust  Overture." 

Owing  to  the  increasing  vogue  of  Strauss,  no 
prophet  is  necessary  to  foretell  a  rank  growth  of 
imitators.  These,  because  barren  of  originality,  will 
succeed  in  copying  the  eccentricities  rather  than  the 
merits  of  their  model.  What  infliction,  what  torture  to 
human  ears  will  result  from  the  inevitable  Bedlam  of 
noise  and  fury,  the  near  future  must  reveal.  But  let 
us  believe  that  a  modicum  of  pity  and  saving  common 

1 06 


RICHARD  STRAUSS 

sense,  in  even  the  most  cruel  devotee  of  such  a  school, 
will  insure  speedy  reaction  toward  saner  and  more 
satisfying  methods. 

While  ignoring  not  its  old  estate,  music  is  moving 
from  its  centre  in  the  emotional  nature,  to  a  strong- 
hold well  within  the  intellectual  life.  Failures  and 
wanderings  indeed  must  be,  but  stagnation  never  in 
this  onward  world.  So,  looking  to  desired  fulfillment, 
let  us  prophesy  of  music  such  rise  as  that  of  man  from 
his  emotional,  half-formed  self  toward  an  ideal  not 
coldly  intellectual,  but  always  warmly  and  nobly  human 
with  what  the  future  foreshadows,  namely,  the  bal- 
anced blending  of  emotion  and  mind,  the  ideal  of  both 
man  and  his  artistic  creations,  in  fact,  the  ideal  of 
ideals  in  whose  very  anticipation  is  forgotten  the 
"  Super  Man  "  of  Nieztsche. 


14  DAY  USE 

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P"C'D   '■'U~ 

0'"*                    :'/   - 

OCT  3  0  ^963 

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'     MAR  8- 1972 

■*r.  n    i    1     innn 

lAR  1 1  1980 

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